The only human cathelicidin antimicrobial peptide, playing key roles in innate immune defense, wound healing, and modulation of inflammatory responses.
Rosacea is a chronic inflammatory skin condition associated with a significant health and economic burden from costs and loss of productivity due to seeking medical treatment. The disease encompasses multiple phenotypic manifestations involving a com…
Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) can directly kill Gram-positive bacteria, Gram-negative bacteria, mycobacteria, fungi, enveloped viruses, and parasites. At sublethal concentrations, some AMPs and also conventional antibiotics can stimulate bacterial re…
An active form of cathelicidin antimicrobial peptide, LL-37, has immunomodulatory and stimulatory effects, though the specific pathways are not clear. The purpose of this study was to identify the cellular pathways by which LL-37 amplifies the inflam…
Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tuberculosis) is an intracellular pathogen that primarily infects macrophages. Despite a robust anti-mycobacterial response, many times macrophages are unable to control M. tuberculosis. The purpose of this study was to…
Although vitamin D (VD) is known to have multiple effects on the skin and immunity, its effects on atopic dermatitis (AD) severity remain unclear. We investigated whether oral cholecalciferol (VD3) supplementation changes stratum corneum expression o…
Wound healing in DFU (diabetic foot ulcer) has prolonged inflammation phase and defective granulation tissue formation. LL-37 has antimicrobial property, induces angiogenesis, and keratinocyte migration and proliferation. This study analyzes the effi…
BACKGROUND: Infections caused by pathogenic microorganisms have increased the need for hospital care and have thus represented a public health problem and a significant financial burden. Classical treatments consisting of traditional antibiotics face…
Antibiotics are often used to treat oral infections. Unfortunately, excessive antibiotic use can adversely alter oral microbiomes and promote the development of antibiotic-resistant microorganisms, which can be difficult to treat. An alternate approa…
AIM: β-defensins 2 and -3 (HBD-2 and HBD-3) and cathelicidin LL-37 are host defense peptides (HDPs) that play a crucial role in the immune response against mycobacteria. Given our former studies in tuberculosis patients wherein their plasma levels of…
Solid-state NMR (ssNMR) spectroscopy facilitates the non-destructive characterization of structurally heterogeneous biomolecules in their native setting, for example, comprising proteins, lipids and polysaccharides. Here we demonstrate the utility of…
INTRODUCTION: Basal cell carcinoma (BCC) is the most common skin cancer in humans, occurring in more than 50% of Caucasians during their lifetime, with a frequency rate that is continually increasing. MATERIAL AND METHODS: We present a systematic rev…
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: A bacterial brain abscess is an emergency and should be drained of pus within 24 hours of diagnosis, as recently recommended. In this cross-sectional study, we investigated whether delaying pus drainage entails brain absces…
BACKGROUND: The immunomodulatory effects of Vitamin D expand to induce the synthesis of an antimicrobial peptide, cathelicidin. There is evidence showing altered levels of cathelicidin in tuberculosis (TB). It has been suggested that Vitamin D-mediat…
Developing an effective treatment strategy of drug delivery to improve diabetic wound healing remains a major challenge in clinical practice nowadays, due to multidrug-resistant bacterial infections, angiopathy, and oxidative damage in the wound micr…
One of the most frequent congenital orofacial defects is the cleft lip and palate. Local tissue defense factors are known to be important in immune response and inflammatory and healing processes in the cleft tissue; however, they have only been rese…
Glioblastoma (GBM) is an aggressive and lethal malignancy of the central nervous system with a median survival rate of 15 months. We investigated the combined anticancer effects of nerve growth factor (NGF), cathelicidin (LL-37), and protegrin-1 (PG-…
Neisseria gonorrhoeae is an exclusively human pathogen able to evade the host immune system through multiple mechanisms. Gonococci accumulate a large portion of phosphate moieties as polyphosphate (polyP) on the exterior of the cell. Although its pol…
Oxygen therapy is important for newborns. However, hyperoxia can cause intestinal inflammation and injury. Hyperoxia-induced oxidative stress is mediated by multiple molecular factors and leads to intestinal damage. Histological changes include ileal…
Escherichia coli O157:H7 is a pathogen that commonly causes foodborne illness and represents a health hazard to consumers. The combined use of synergistic antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) is a promising way to improve the microbiological safety of foods…
Each year, 3.3 million Americans are diagnosed with non-melanoma skin cancers (NMSC) and an additional 40 million individuals undergo treatment of precancerous actinic keratosis lesions. The most effective treatments of NMSC (surgical excision and Mo…