Iron avidity

Iron-deficiency anemia (IDA) affects many infants in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and may impair cognitive development and adaptive immunity. Effective interventions to improve iron intakes for infants in LMICs are urgently needed. However, absorption of oral iron fortificants and supplements is low, usually <10%, and most of the iron passes into the colon unabsorbed. In randomized controlled trials, provision of iron to infants in LMICs adversely affects their gut microbiome and increases pathogenic Escherichia coli, gut inflammation, and diarrhea...

Imaging technologies that allow non-radiative visualization and quantification of apoptosis have a great potential for assessing therapy response, early diagnosis, and disease monitoring. Magnetic particle imaging (MPI), the direct imaging of magnetic nanoparticles as positive contrast agent and sole signal source, enables high image contrast (no tissue background signal), potential high sensitivity, and quantifiable signal intensity. These properties confer a great potential for application to tumor apoptosis monitoring...

Background: Iron deficiency may impair adaptive immunity and is common among African infants at time of vaccination. Whether iron deficiency impairs vaccine response and whether iron supplementation improves humoral vaccine response is uncertain. Methods: We performed two studies in southern coastal Kenya. In a birth cohort study, we followed infants to age 18 mo and assessed whether anemia or iron deficiency at time of vaccination predicted vaccine response to three-valent oral polio, diphtheria-tetanus-whole cell pertussis- Haemophilus influenzae type b vaccine, ten-valent pneumococcal-conjugate vaccine and measles vaccine...

Determination of the adipogenic potential and behavior of adipose-derived mesenchymal stem/stromal cells (ASCs) is particularly relevant for their potential clinical application in regenerative medicine, especially when regeneration is supported by biomaterials or scaffolds. Scaffolds need to be able to induce tissue repair and limit undesired adipogenic differentiation. Depending on the scaffold employed, determination of cell behavior may be hindered by material interference with staining, which will limit either cells identification or dye quantification...

Serum albumin binds avidly to heme to form heme-serum albumin complex and can protect against the potentially toxic effects of heme. Rutin is a glycoside of the bioflavonoid quercetin with various protective effects due to its antioxidant ability. Clarification of the interaction mechanisms between serum albumin and bioactive components (such as heme and flavonoid) is important to develop effective carriers for encapsulation of heme and suppression of its toxicity. In this study, bindings of bovine serum albumin (BSA) to heme and/or rutin were investigated by experimental and molecular docking techniques...

Heme is an essential cofactor for many enzymes, but free heme is toxic and its levels are tightly regulated. G-quadruplexes bind heme avidly in vitro, raising the possibility that they may sequester heme in vivo. If so, then treatment that displaces heme from quadruplexes is predicted to induce expression of genes involved in iron and heme homeostasis. Here we show that PhenDC3, a G-quadruplex ligand structurally unrelated to heme, displaces quadruplex-bound heme in vitro and alters transcription in cultured human cells, upregulating genes that support heme degradation and iron homeostasis, and most strikingly causing a 30-fold induction of heme oxidase 1, the key enzyme in heme degradation...

By the early decades of the nineteenth century, with surveys established as the weapon of choice for the fiscal military state, their instrumentation provided a focal point for radical attacks on political establishments. This paper considers a notorious dispute over mastery of iron in the instrumentation of magnetic surveying that took place in the 1830s between an Admiralty committee and the Reverend William Scoresby, a whaler-turned-clergyman. Scoresby staked his claim by drawing on the labour law of the whaleboats, a culture peculiarly preoccupied with the properties of bone and blubber, ink and skin, parchment and iron, where magnetism was forged in the 'combinations', as Scoresby put it, of such specific materials...

INTRODUCTION: Nowadays, nanoparticles (NPs) have attracted much attention in biomedical imaging due to their unique magnetic and optical characteristics. Superparamagnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (SPIONs) are the prosperous group of NPs with the capability to apply as magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) contrast agents. Radiolabeling of targeted SPIONs with positron emitters can develop dual positron emission tomography (PET)/MRI agents to achieve better diagnosis of clinical conditions...

DNA is the carrier of genetic information. DNA modifications play a central role in essential physiological processes. Phosphorothioation (PT) modification involves the replacement of an oxygen atom on the DNA backbone with a sulfur atom. PT modification can cause genomic instability in Salmonella enterica under hypochlorous acid stress. This modification restores hydrogen peroxide (H2 O2 ) resistance in the catalase-deficient Escherichia coli Hpx- strain. Here, we report biochemical characterization results for a purified PT modification protein complex (DndCDE) from S...

Noninvasive tools that target tumor cells could improve the management of glioma. Cancer generally has a high demand for Fe(III), an essential nutrient for a variety of biochemical processes. We tested whether 68Ga-citrate, an Fe(III) biomimetic that binds to apo-transferrin in blood, detects glioma in preclinical models and patients using hybrid PET/MRI. Mouse PET/CT studies showed that 68Ga-citrate accumulates in subcutaneous U87MG xenografts in a transferrin receptor-dependent fashion within 4 hours after injection...

Retromer is a phylogenetically conserved, multisubunit coat complex that controls endosomal protein trafficking and sorting. Mutations in the retromer gene VPS35 cause late-onset Parkinson disease, suggesting that trafficking defects cause neurodegeneration. Sorting nexins assist retromer to guide cell surface proteins to their assigned destinations, and our interest here is sorting nexin 3 (Snx3). Snx3 binds to membranes via a phox homolog (PX) domain that binds phosphatidylinositol 3-phosphate (PI3P), and in human cells its cargo proteins are the transferrin and Wnt receptors and the divalent metal ion transporter, whereas in yeast the best characterized cargo is the iron permease Ftr1...

Microglia are intrinsic components of the brain immune system and are activated in many central nervous system disorders. The ability to noninvasively image these cells would provide valuable information for both research and clinical applications. Today, most imaging probes for activated microglia are mainly designed for positron emission tomography (PET) and target translocator proteins that also reside on other cerebral cells. The PET images obtained are not specific for microglia-driven inflammation. Here, we describe a potential PET/MRI multimodal imaging probe that selectively targets the scavenger receptor class A (SR-A) expressed on activated microglia...

The diagnosis of Parkinson's disease (PD) occurs after pathogenesis is advanced and many substantia nigra (SN) dopamine neurons have already died. Now that therapies to block this neuronal loss are under development, it is imperative that the disease be diagnosed at earlier stages and that the response to therapies is monitored. Recent studies suggest this can be accomplished by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) detection of neuromelanin (NM), the characteristic pigment of SN dopaminergic, and locus coeruleus (LC) noradrenergic neurons...

A 44-year-old man presented with fever (low to high grade) for 2-month duration despite treatment with oral antibiotics and antipyretics. Further, enquiry did not yield any potentially explanatory clues to a diagnosis. Physical examination revealed only left axillary lymphadenopathy, but was otherwise unremarkable. A number of diagnosis included tuberculosis, malignancy, lymphoma, connective disease disorder and infective endocarditis. Further evaluation revealed severe anaemia due to iron deficiency which was supported with blood transfusion and oral iron supplementation...

PURPOSE: To provide clinically useful gadolinium-free whole-body cancer staging of children and young adults with integrated positron emission tomography/magnetic resonance (PET/MR) imaging in less than 1 h. PROCEDURES: In this prospective clinical trial, 20 children and young adults (11-30 years old, 6 male, 14 female) with solid tumors underwent 2-deoxy-2-[18 F]fluoro-D-glucose ([18 F]FDG) PET/MR on a 3T PET/MR scanner after intravenous injection of ferumoxytol (5 mg Fe/kg) and [18 F]FDG (2-3 MBq/kg)...

123 I-meta-iodo benzyl guanidine (MIBG) scans are considered the gold standard imaging in neuroblastoma; however, flouro deoxy glucose positron emission tomography (FDG-PET) scans have increased sensitivity in adults with pheochromocytoma/paraganglioma. We describe a pediatric patient initially considered to have localized neuroblastoma based on anatomical imaging and123 I-MIBG scan, but subsequent investigations revealed germline succinate dehydrogenase complex iron sulfur subunit B (SDHB) mutation-associated pheochromocytoma with multiple FDG-avid skeletal metastases...

Fluorescent Pseudomonas, aerobic, Gram-negative bacteria possess many traits that make them well suited as biocontrol and growth promoting agents. Our study revealed that isolates vary in mechanisms involved in the antagonist interactions against pathogen and growth stimulatory effects on host plant. Most of the potential antagonistic fluorescent Pseudomonas identified were avid iron chelators (P233, P201, 176, P76 and, P76). Wide variation in ACCd enzyme production was observed. ACCd enzyme assay tested P141 > P247 > P126, as potential ACCd enzyme producer...

Measuring the oxygen content during winemaking and bottle storage has become increasingly popular due to its impact on the sensory quality and longevity of wines. Nevertheless, only a few attempts to describe the kinetics of oxygen consumption based on the chemical composition of wines have been published. Therefore, this study proposes firstly a new fitting approach describing oxygen consuming kinetics and secondly the use of an Artificial Neural Network approach to describe and compare the oxygen avidity of wines according to their basic chemical composition (i...

Antiangiogenic and vascular disrupting compounds have shown promise in cancer therapy, but tend to be only partially effective. We previously reported a potent theranostic nanosystem that was highly effective in glioblastoma and breast cancer mouse models, retarding tumor growth and producing some cures [ Agemy , L. et al. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 2011 , 108 , 17450 - 17455 . Agemy , L. et al. Mol. Ther. 2013 , 21 , 2195 - 2204 .]. The nanosystem consists of iron oxide NPs ("nanoworms") coated with a composite peptide with tumor-homing and pro-apoptotic domains...

Pseudomonas aeruginosa (Pa) and Aspergillus fumigatus (Af) are major human pathogens known to interact in a variety of disease settings, including airway infections in cystic fibrosis. We recently reported that clinical CF isolates of Pa inhibit the formation and growth of Af biofilms. Here, we report that the bacteriophage Pf4, produced by Pa, can inhibit the metabolic activity of Af biofilms. This phage-mediated inhibition was dose dependent, ablated by phage denaturation, and was more pronounced against preformed Af biofilm rather than biofilm formation...