The only human cathelicidin antimicrobial peptide, playing key roles in innate immune defense, wound healing, and modulation of inflammatory responses.
Antimicrobial peptides are of great interest due to their potential application as novel antibiotics. Large quantities of highly purified peptides are required to meet the needs of basic research and clinical trials. Compared with isolation from natu…
Transgenic C57BL/6 mice expressing human serum amyloid P component (HuSAP) are resistant to Shiga toxin 2 (Stx2) at dosages that are lethal in HuSAP-negative wild-type mice. However, it is well established that Stx2 initiates extra-intestinal complic…
Chemerin, a ligand for the G-protein coupled receptor chemokine-like receptor 1, requires C-terminal proteolytic processing to unleash its chemoattractant activity. Proteolytically processed chemerin selectively attracts specific subsets of immunoreg…
BACKGROUND: The antimicrobial peptide, leucine-leucine-37 (LL-37), stimulates proliferation, angiogenesis, and cellular migration, inhibits apoptosis and is associated with inflammation. Since these functional processes are often exaggerated in cance…
BACKGROUND & AIMS: Cathelicidin (encoded by Camp) is an antimicrobial peptide in the innate immune system. We examined whether macrophages express cathelicidin in colons of mice with experimental colitis and patients with inflammatory bowel disease,…
OBJECTIVE: The direct activity of antimicrobial peptides against microbes is thought to be an essential first line of defence in the skin; however, little is known about antimicrobial peptide secretion in the skin of the external auditory canal. Evid…
Lyme borreliosis is an arthropod-borne disease transmitted by the Ixodes tick. This spirochetal infection is first characterized by a local cutaneous inflammation, the erythema migrans. The skin constitutes a key interface in the development of the d…
Control of tuberculosis worldwide depends on our understanding of human immune mechanisms, which combat the infection. Acquired T cell responses are critical for host defense against microbial pathogens, yet the mechanisms by which they act in humans…
OBJECTIVE: Nasal carriage of Staphylococcus aureus in patients with chronic rhinosinusitis with nasal polyps (NP) is hypothesized to have pathophysiological impact on the disease. Antimicrobial peptides (AMP), especially human beta-defensin-3 (hBD-3)…
BACKGROUND: Obstructive jaundice is associated with bacterial translocation and inflammatory cytokine induction. It is unknown if toll-like receptors (TLRs) and their upstream molecule high mobility group box-1 (HMGB1) are involved in the pathogeneti…
The positively charged side chains of cationic antimicrobial peptides are generally thought to provide the initial long-range electrostatic attractive forces that guide them towards the negatively charged bacterial membranes. Peptide analogs were des…
Bacterial strategies of innate immune evasion and essential metabolic functions are critical for commensal-host homeostasis. Previously, we showed that Sap translocator function is necessary for nontypeable Haemophilus influenzae (NTHI) behaviors tha…
PURPOSE: This study was conducted to investigate whether flagellin, the sole ligand of Toll-like receptor-5 (TLR5), induces an innate defense that is sufficient to protect injured corneas from Candida albicans. METHODS: Scarified corneas of adult B6,…
Cathelicidins exhibit anti-HIV activity but it is not known if they reduce the activity of enzymes crucial to the life cycle of the retrovirus. It is shown in this investigation that human cathelicidin LL37 and its fragments LL13-37 and LL17-32 inhib…
An antimicrobial peptide, LL-37, is found in an innate defense system of humans. Patients who suffer urinary tract infection (UTI) will generate LL-37 and which is released into urine. LL-37 can be used as an indicator for the diagnosis of UTI. We ha…
BACKGROUND: Protozoan parasites, such as Leishmania, still pose an enormous public health problem in many countries throughout the world. Current measures are outdated and have some associated drug resistance, prompting the search into novel therapie…
Intestinal colonization of avian species by Eimeria parasites results in the enteric disease, coccidiosis. A study was carried out to assess the immunologic effects of Eimeria praecox infection on the gut of infected chickens. In Experiment 1, birds…
Cathelicidins are among the best characterized antimicrobial peptides and have been shown to have an important role in mammalian innate immunity. We recently isolated a novel mature cathelicidin peptide (codCath) from Atlantic cod and in the present…
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: The antimicrobial peptide LL-37, derived from human neutrophils, can directly chemoattract leukocytes and up-regulate the expression of several immune-related genes in various cell types. In this study, we wanted to determin…
Muller cells, the principal glia of the retina, play several key roles in normal and various retinal diseases. To date, their direct involvement in retinal innate defense against bacterial pathogens has not been investigated. In this article, we show…