Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Skin and Connective Tissue Diseases Commons™

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

The Texas Medical Center Library

Articles 1 - 5 of 5

Full-Text Articles in Skin and Connective Tissue Diseases

Adipocytes And Innate Immunity In Systemic Sclerosis, Nancy Wareing May 2023

Adipocytes And Innate Immunity In Systemic Sclerosis, Nancy Wareing

Dissertations & Theses (Open Access)

Systemic sclerosis (SSc; scleroderma) is a chronic systemic autoimmune and connective tissue disorder characterized by vasculopathy, autoimmune phenomena, and widespread fibrosis. Skin thickening and tightening is the cardinal feature of SSc and is responsible, in part, for the considerable morbidity of this disease. There are currently no targeted treatments for skin manifestations in SSc, primarily due to our fragmented understanding of its pathophysiologic mechanisms. In PART I, we report a previously unappreciated link between aberrant expression of the developmental gene sine oculis homeobox homolog 1 (SIX1) in skin-associated adipocytes in SSc skin and the early loss of dermal white adipose …

Go to article

Integrative Cancer Immunogenomic Analysis Of Serial Melanoma Biopsies Reveals Correlates Of Response And Resistance To Sequential Ctla-4 And Pd-1 Blockade Treatment, Whijae Roh Dec 2017

Integrative Cancer Immunogenomic Analysis Of Serial Melanoma Biopsies Reveals Correlates Of Response And Resistance To Sequential Ctla-4 And Pd-1 Blockade Treatment, Whijae Roh

Dissertations & Theses (Open Access)

Melanoma is the most malignant form of skin cancer. The five-year survival rate for metastatic melanoma is 19.9%. Although targeted therapy of BRAF and MEK inhibitors were developed for melanoma, resistance to therapy is inevitable. Immune checkpoint blockade, which reverses the suppression of the immune system, on the other hand, has shown a durable response in 20-30% of patients with metastatic melanoma. However, more predictive and robust biomarkers of response to this therapy are still needed, and resistance mechanisms remain incompletely understood. To address this, we examined a cohort of metastatic melanoma patients treated with sequential checkpoint blockade against cytotoxic …

Go to article

Poly (Adp) Ribose Polymerase Inhibitors For The Treatment Of Malignant Peripheral Nerve Sheath Tumor, Christine M. Kivlin May 2016

Poly (Adp) Ribose Polymerase Inhibitors For The Treatment Of Malignant Peripheral Nerve Sheath Tumor, Christine M. Kivlin

Dissertations & Theses (Open Access)

Malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumor (MPNST) is a rare subtype of soft tissue sarcoma. Surgical excision has remained the standard of care for this highly aggressive malignancy for over a decade. Conventional chemotherapy and radiotherapy have shown limited efficacy in MPNST; therefore, it is imperative that targeted treatment be identified to improve the outcome for MPNST patients. Poly (ADP) ribose polymerase (PARP) inhibitors were first reported over a decade ago to have substantial anti-tumorigenic effects in malignancies with defective DNA repair, specifically those with BRCA1/2 (breast cancer, early onset 1/2) mutations. Further evaluation of these inhibitors has shown multiple mechanisms …

Go to article

Characterization Of Differentiation And Prognostic Biomarkers On Cd8+ Tumor-Infiltrating Lymphocytes In Metastatic Melanoma, Richard C. Wu May 2013

Characterization Of Differentiation And Prognostic Biomarkers On Cd8+ Tumor-Infiltrating Lymphocytes In Metastatic Melanoma, Richard C. Wu

Dissertations & Theses (Open Access)

CD8+ cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTL) frequently infiltrate tumors, yet most melanoma patients fail to undergo tumor regression. We studied the differentiation of the CD8+ tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TIL) from 44 metastatic melanoma patients using known T-cell differentiation markers. We also compared CD8+ TIL against the T cells from matched melanoma patients’ peripheral blood. We discovered a novel subset of CD8+ TIL co-expressing early-differentiation markers, CD27, CD28, and a late/senescent CTL differentiation marker, CD57. This CD8+CD57+ TIL expressed a cytolytic enzyme, granzyme B (GB), yet did not express another cytolytic pore-forming molecule, perforin (Perf). In …

Go to article

Plasmacytoid Dendritic Cells Sense Skin Injury And Promote Wound Healing Through Type I Interferons, Josh D. Gregorio Dec 2010

Plasmacytoid Dendritic Cells Sense Skin Injury And Promote Wound Healing Through Type I Interferons, Josh D. Gregorio

Dissertations & Theses (Open Access)

Plasmacytoid dendritic cells (pDCs) are a rare population of circulating cells, which selectively express intracellular Toll-like receptors (TLR)-7 and TLR-9 and have the capacity to produce large amounts of type I IFNs (IFN-a/b) in response to viruses or host derived nucleic acid containing complexes. pDCs are normally absent in skin but accumulate in the skin of psoriasis patients where their chronic activation to produce IFN-a/b drives the disease formation. Whether pDCs and their activation to produce IFN-a/b play a functional role in healthy skin is unknown. Here we show that pDCs are rapidly and transiently recruited into healthy human and …

Go to article