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Characterising the PEPITEM pathway in patients with atherosclerosis

Atherosclerosis is an asymptomatic disease which is regarded as one of the most fatal diseases. However, the mechanism of the immune response is not well understood. There is accumulated evidence supporting the idea that inflammatory response initiates the disease. A new novel peptide has been discovered in our lab which down-regulates T cell recruitment during inflammation called PEPITEM (Peptide Inhibitor of Trans Endothelial Migration). We are interested in testing the action of PEPITEM on PBL isolated from atherosclerosis patients. We first demonstrated that PEPITEM did not affect the levels of adhesion of PBL from either diseased or healthy donors. Interestingly however, we did observe that PBL isolated from atherosclerosis patients adhere more readily than those isolated from healthy control subjects. Therefore, we studied the surface expression of certain adhesion molecules and chemokine receptors on the PBL of atherosclerosis patients. We found significantly higher surface expression of Beta-receptor family (Beta-1 and Beta-2) and PSGL-1 receptors in some PBL subsets in atherosclerosis patients. In addition, we looked at the effect of PEPITEM and adiponectin (AQ) treatment on the migration of PBL and we revealed for the first time based on our knowledge that there was no effect of treatment on PBL isolated from atherosclerosis patients. These observations will contribute to understanding the potential therapeutic applications of PEPITEM on atherosclerosis.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:bl.uk/oai:ethos.bl.uk:699128
Date January 2016
CreatorsAlassiri, Mohammed
PublisherUniversity of Birmingham
Source SetsEthos UK
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeElectronic Thesis or Dissertation
Sourcehttp://etheses.bham.ac.uk//id/eprint/7065/

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