• Proceedings of the Korea Crystallographic Association Conference
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• 2002.11a
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• pp.24-24
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• 2002

HtrA (high temperature requirement A), a periplasmic heat shock protein, is known to have molecular chaperone function at low temperatures and proteolytic activity at elevated temperatures. To investigate the mechanism of functional switch to pretense, we have determined the crystal structure of the N-terminal protease domain (PD) of HtrA from Thermotoga maritima. HtrA PD shares the same fold with chymotrypsin-like serine professes. However, crystal structure suggests that HtrA PD is not an active pretense at current state since its active site is not formed properly and blocked by an additional helical lid. On the surface of the lid, HtrA PD has hydrophobic patches that could be potential substrate binding sites for molecular chaperone activity. Present structure suggests that the activation of the proteolytic function of HtrA PD at elevated temperatures might occur by the conformational change.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons
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• v.41 no.1
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• pp.11-18
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• 2015

Objectives: The goal of this study was to determine the correlation of clinicopathological factors and the up-regulation of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) expression in oral squamous cell carcinoma. Materials and Methods: Immunohistochemical staining of VEGF and quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) of VEGF mRNA were performed in 20 specimens from 20 patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma and another 20 specimens from 20 patients with carcinoma in situ as a controlled group. Results: The results were as follows: 1) In immunohistochemical study of poorly differentiated and invasive oral squamous cell carcinoma, high-level staining of VEGF was observed. Significant correlation was observed between immunohistochemical VEGF expression and histologic differentiation, tumor size of specimens (Pearson correlation analysis, significance r>0.6, P<0.05). 2) In VEGF quantitative RT-PCR analysis, progressive cancer showed more VEGF expression than carcinoma in situ. Paired-samples analysis determined the difference of VEGF mRNA expression level between cancer tissue and carcinoma in situ tissue, between T1 and T2-4 (Student's t-test, P<0.05). Conclusion: These findings suggest that up-regulation of VEGF may play a role in the angiogenesis and progression of oral squamous cell carcinoma.

• IMMUNE NETWORK
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.2.1-2.19
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• 2020

Acute viral infection or vaccination generates highly functional memory CD8 T cells following the Ag resolution. In contrast, persistent antigenic stimulation in chronic viral infection and cancer leads to a state of T-cell dysfunction termed T-cell exhaustion. We and other have recently identified a novel subset of exhausted CD8 T cells that act as stem cells for maintaining virus-specific CD8 T cells in a mouse model of chronic lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus infection. This stem cell-like CD8 T-cell subset has been also observed in both mouse and human tumor models. Most importantly, in both chronic viral infection and tumor models, the proliferative burst of Ag-specific CD8 T cells driven by PD-1-directed immunotherapy comes exclusively from this stem cell-like CD8 T-cell subset. Therefore, a better understanding of the mechanisms how CD8 T-cell subsets are regulated during chronic viral infection and cancer is required to improve the current immunotherapies that restore the function of exhausted CD8 T cells. In this review, we discuss the differentiation of virus-specific CD8 T cells during chronic viral infection, the characteristics and function of CD8 T-cell subsets, and the therapeutic intervention of PD-1-directed immunotherapy in cancer.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons
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• v.32 no.2
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• pp.81-93
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• 2006

Obstructive sialadenitis is one of common disease in salivary gland, and most common histologic features are loss of acinar cell and ductal dilatation associated with fibrosis, and infiltration of inflammatory cells. Although many experimental studies has been accomplished for the salivary acinar cell change in obstructive salivary gland disease, studies for myoepithelial cell were deficient. This study is designed for salivary gland tissue change, especially myoepithelial cell when nonspecific chronic sialadenitis or salivary duct injury by duct obstruction or cut can be occurred that is common encounted clinically. After ligation and cutting of submandibular gland of rabbit, groups of aminmal were sacrificed at 1, 2, 4 weeks postoperatively, submandibular gland were removed. The histopathologic evaluation was done with light microscopy. And, with immunohistochemical staining with ${\alpha}$-smooth muscle actin, characteristics of myoepithelial cell were examined. With transmission electron microscopy, ultrastructure of myoepithelial cell were examined for distribution and ultrastructure of myoepithelial cell. The results were obtained as follows: 1. In the histopathologic evaluation, ligation and cutting group of 1 week, linkage of myoepithelial cell associated with acinar atrophy and degeneration were disappeared in both group. 2. More prominent squamous metaplasia was seen in acinar cells of ligation group of 2 weeks experimental rabbit than cutting group. 3. Acinar cells are nearly disappeared in both ligation and cutting group of 4 weeks, and myoepithelial cell also disappeared associated with acinar cell atrophy, and duct-like structure composed by squamous cells by squamous metaplasia in acinar cells were distributed. 4. In immunohistochemical study, both ligation and cutting group ${\alpha}$-SMA distribution were diminished at 1 week experimental rabbits, but myoepithelial cell was more diminished in ligation group than cutting group, which were distributed around cells of squamous metaplasia. 5. Nuclear condensation, chromosome margination, and cytoplasmic vaculoation were appeared in myoepithelial cell of both cutting and ligation group after 1 week with transmission electron microscopy. But degenerative substance were seen in cytoplasm of myoepithelial cell of ligation group of 4 weeks. From the results obtained in this study, atrophy and degeneration of myoepithelial cell was more prominent in duct ligation group than duct cutting group, and myoepithelial cells were seen around cells squamous metaplasia of acinar cell.

• Asian-Australasian Journal of Animal Sciences
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• v.13 no.10
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• pp.1347-1352
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• 2000

The objectives of the study were to examine non-genetic factors that influence somatic cell counts in dairy cattle and to estimate the genetic parameters of somatic cell counts. A total of 34, 097-test day somatic cell count records were obtained from the Zimbabwe Dairy Services Association (ZDSA). The data were from 5, 615 Holstein daughters of 390 sires and 2, 541 dams tested between May 1994 and December 1998. First lactation cows contributed 22, 147 records to the data set, while 11, 950 records were from second and later parity cows. The model for analysis included fixed effects of month of calving, year of calving, stage of lactation, calving interval and test date. Milk yield and age on test day were fitted in the model as covariates. The additive genetic effects pertaining to cows, sires and dams and the residual error were the random effects. The Average Information Restricted Maximum Likelihood algorithm was used for analysis. The heritability of somatic cell scores was low at $0.027{\pm}0.013$ for parity one cows and $0.087{\pm}0.031$ for parity two and above. Repeatability estimates were $0.22{\pm}0.01$ and $0.30{\pm}0.01$ for the two lactation groups, respectively. Genetic and phenotypic correlations between the somatic cell scores and test day milk production were small and negative. It seems that there is no genetic link between somatic cell counts and milk yield in Holstein cattle in Zimbabwe. The results also seem to indicate that somatic cell count is a trait that is mainly governed by environmental factors.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons
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• v.35 no.5
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• pp.287-293
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• 2009

Cell survival is the result of a balance between programmed cell death and cellular proliferation. Cell membrane receptors and their associated signal transducing proteins control these processes. Of the numerous receptors and signaling proteins, epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) is one of the most important receptors involved in signaling pathways implicated in the proliferation and survival of cancer cells. EGFR is often highly expressed in human tumors including oral squamous cell carcinomas, and there is increasing evidence that high expression of EGFR is correlated with poor clinical outcome of common human cancers. Therefore, we examined the antiproliferative activity of gefitinib, epidermal growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitor (EGFR TKI), in head and neck cancer cell lines. SCC-9, KB cells were cultured and growth inhibition activity of gefitinib was measured with MTT assay. To study influence of gefitinib in cell cycle, we performed cell cycle analysis with flow cytometry. Western blot was done to elucidate the expression of EGFR in cell lines and phosphorylation of EGFR and downstream kinase protein, Erk and Akt. Significant growth inhibition was observed in SCC-9 cells in contrast with KB cells. Also, flow cytometric analysis showed G1 phase arrest only in SCC-9 cells. In Western blot analysis for investigation of EGFR expression and downstream molecule phosphorylation, gefitinib suppressed phosphorylation of EGFR and downstream protein kinase Erk, Akt in SCC-9. However, in EGFR positive KB cells, weak expression of active form of Erk and Akt and no inhibitory activity of phosphorylation in Erk and Akt was observed. The antiproliferative activity of gefitinib was not correlated with EGFR expression and some possibility of phosphorylation of Erk and Akt as a predictive factor of gefitinib response was emerged. Further investigations on more reliable predictive factor indicating gefitinib response are awaited to be useful gefitinib treatment in head and neck cancer patients.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.1-6
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• 2010

Purpose: Chemokines are structurally related, small polypeptide signaling molecules that bind to and activate a family of transmembrane G protein-coupled receptors, the chemokine receptors. Recently, interaction between the chemokine receptor CXCR4 and its ligand, stromal cell-derived factor 1 (SDF-1 or CXCL12), has been found to play an important role in tumorigenicity, proliferation, metastasis and angiogenesis in many cancers such as lung cancer, breast cancer, melanoma, glioblastoma, pancreatic cancer and cholangiocarcinoma. Hence, the goal of this study is to identify the correlation of clinicopathological factors and the up-regulation of SDF-1 expression in oral squamous cell carcinoma. Material and methods: We studied the immunohistochemical staining of SDF-1, quantitative RT-PCR (qRT-PCR) of SDF-1 gene in 20 specimens of 20 patients with oral squamous cell carcinoma. Results: 1. In the immunohistochemical study of poor differentiated and invasive oral squamous cell carcinoma, the high level staining of SDF-1 was observed. And the correlation between immunohistochemical SDF-1 expression and tumor nodes metastases (TNM) classification of specimens was significant.($x^2$ test, P < 0.05) 2. In the SDF-1 gene qRT-PCR analysis, SDF-1 expression was more in tumor tissue than in carcinoma in situ tissue. Paired-samples analysis determined the difference of SDF-1 mRNA expression level between the cancer tissue and the carcinoma in situ tissue.(Student's t-test, P < 0.05) Conclusion: These findings suggest that up-regulation of the SDF-1 may play a role in progression and invasion of oral squamous cell carcinoma.

• The Journal of the Korea Contents Association
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• v.11 no.5
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• pp.84-92
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• 2011

The automated segmentation technique of cell region in Bio Images helps biologists understand complex functions of cells. It is mightly important in that it can process the analysis of cells automatically which has been done manually before. The conventional methods for segmentation of cell and nuclei from multi-channel images consist of two steps. In the first step nuclei are extracted from DNA channel, and used as initial contour for the second step. In the second step cytoplasm are segmented from Actin channel by using Active Contour model based on intensity. However, conventional studies have some limitation that they let the cell segmentation performance fall by not considering inhomogeneous intensity problem in cell images. Therefore, the paper consider correlation between DNA and Actin channel, and then proposes the preprocessing algorithm by which the brightness of cell inside in Actin channel can be compensated homogeneously by using DNA channel information. Experiment result show that the proposed preprocessing method improves the cell segmentation performance compared to the conventional method.

• Journal of the Korean Association of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.103-108
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• 2007

Cyclooxygenase-2 (Cox-2) is known as one of the critical factor in carcinomas of various organs. However, the importance of Cox-2 in oral squamous cell carcinoma has not been fully described yet. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the anti-cancer effect of selective cox-2 inhibitor, celecoxib in an oral squamous cell carcinoma cell line, KB with respect to cytotoxicity test, in vitro invasion and MMP-2 expression. In cytotoxicity test, celecoxib treated group showed definitely concentration dependent cytotoxicity. In addition, administration of celecoxib reduced the invasive potential of KB cell line significantly in invasion assay. However, there was no remarkable difference of the MMP-2 expression between the celecoxib treated group and the control group. Considering these data, celecoxib had a potential cytotoxic agent to oral squamous cell carcinoma cells. Also, it had anti-invasive property without acting on the MMP-2 expression mechanism. Therefore, it was postulated that celecoxib had the possibility of anti-cancer agent in treatment strategies of oral squamous cell carcinoma.

• IMMUNE NETWORK
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.176-183
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• 2004

Background: Human seminal plasma (HSP)-induced hypersensitivity is one of the serious complications with sexual intercourse. The clinical manifestations of HSP-induced hypersensitivity may be related to the release of vasoactive mediators from mast cell induced by HSP. It has recently been reported that HSP modulates immune systems and induces mast cell degranulation and histamine release from rat peritoneal mast cells (RPMC). Ketotifen and disodium cromoglycate (DSCG), anti-asthmatic and anti-allergic drugs, have a role of mast cell stabilization and inhibit mast cell-induced leukocyte rolling and adhesion. But the inhibitory agents of HSP-induced mast cell activation are unknown. This study was performed to investigate the effects of DSCG and ketotifen on the HSP-induced mast cell activation. Methods: For this, influences of DSCG and ketotifen on the human seminal plasma-induced degranulation, histamine release and morphological changes of RPMC were observed. Results: The mast cell degranulation and histamine release of RPMC by HSP were induced in a dose-dependent fashion. The HSP-induced cytomorphological changes such as swelling, intracellular vacoules, and interrupted cell boundary were significantly inhibited by pretreatment with DSCG or ketotifen. DSCG and Ketotifen inhibited the HSP-induced degranulation and histamine release from RPMC. Conclusion: From the above results, it is suggested that DSCG and ketotifen have a inhibitory effect of the HSP-induced mast cell activation. DSCG and ketotifen may be used for treatment of HSP-induced hypersensitivity.