immunohistochemical expression prior to CABG procedure might serve as a predictive indicator of potential early graft failure.
Thymocyte-thymic epithelial cell interactions in EphB-deficient miceEpithelial free areas (EFA) are known to occur in both the cortex and medulla of the thymus in a variety of animal species. Whether the cortical and thymic EFAs represent the same or different histological and functional situations remains open for debate. Garcia-Ceca et al. (2017) have now investigated whether EFAs might represent microenvironments where thymocyte-thymic epithelial cell (TEC) interactions are disrupted, potentially resulting in altered thymic histology. As a model system, they employed EphB-deficient mice (EphB, a family of protein tyrosine kinases, and ephrins-B, their ligands are regulators of epithelial organization) previously shown by these authors to display altered thymocyte-TEC interactions (Garcia-Ceca et al. 2015). They used multilabel fluorescence microscopy, semiquantitative analysis, and transmission electron microscopy to evaluate the number and sizes of EFAs, as well as their organization and cell content in EphB-deficient mice compared to wild-type (WT) control animals. Their morphological results showed that: (1) in both WT and EphB-deficient mice, the number and size of EFAs were larger in the medulla compared to the cortex; (2) low numbers of EFAs correlate with larger areas; (3) EFA structure and cell content are similar in WT and EphB-deficient thymuses; and (4) EFAs in cortex and medulla contain different cell types and are structurally distinct with cortical areas possessing DP thymocytes and medullary regions SP thymocytes. Overall, their results suggest that EFAs in their model may be partially due to
New details for predicting saphenous vein graft occlusion following CABG surgeryCoronary artery bypass grafting (CABG) is currently the method of choice for improving blood flow in the atherosclerotic vessel through surgical procedures. In younger patients (less than 65 years of age) a segment from the internal thoracic artery is classically used as the donor vessel for the graft, whereas in patients older than 65 years of age a section from the saphenous vein is typically chosen since it is less likely to undergo arterialization (Al-Sabti et al. 2013). Although much information is known concerning factors responsible for patency rates for internal thoracic artery donor vessels, very little is currently known about those responsible for saphenous vein patency in CABG procedures. However, since stem cell and progenitor cell proliferation in the graft wall have been shown to be involved in early saphenous vein graft occlusion (Timmermans et al. 2009), Malinska et al. (2017 performed a multivariate analysis of stem cell and progenitor cell markers in the donor saphenous vein wall prior to CABG procedure, followed by correlation with graft occlusion. Their results showed that strong immunohistochemical expression of CD133 (a stem cell marker) in smooth muscle cells of the tunica media ...