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Biomedical subjects

A Mellon

Publications and source records attributed to A Mellon.

5 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1992

Amyloid beta-peptide is produced by cultured cells during normal metabolism.

Alzheimer's disease is characterized by the extracellular deposition in the brain and its blood vessels of insoluble aggregates of the amyloid beta-peptide (A beta), a fragment, of about 40 amino acids in length, of the integral membrane protein beta-amyloid precursor protein (beta-APP). The mechanism of extracellular accumulation of A beta in brain is unknown and no simple in vitro or in vivo model systems that produce extracellular A beta have been described. We report here the unexpected identification of the 4K (M(r) 4,000) A beta and a truncated form of A beta (approximately 3K) in media from cultures of primary cells and untransfected and beta-APP-transfected cell lines grown under normal conditions. These peptides were immunoprecipitated readily from culture medium by A beta-specific antibodies and their identities confirmed by sequencing. The concept that pathological processes are responsible for the production of A beta must not be reassessed in light of the observation that A beta is produced in soluble form in vitro and in vivo during normal cellular metabolism. Further, these findings provide the basis for using simple cell culture systems to identify drugs that block the formation or release of A beta, the primary protein constituent of the senile plaques of Alzheimer's disease.

Amyloid beta-Peptides↗
PubMed1992

Targeting of cell-surface beta-amyloid precursor protein to lysosomes: alternative processing into amyloid-bearing fragments.

Progressive cerebral deposition of the amyloid beta-peptide is an early and invariant feature of Alzheimer's disease. The beta-peptide is released by proteolytic cleavages from the beta-amyloid precursor protein (beta APP), a membrane-spanning glycoprotein expressed in most mammalian cells. Normal secretion of beta APP involves a cleavage in the beta-peptide region, releasing the soluble extramembranous portion and retaining a 10K C-terminal fragment in the membrane. Because this secretory pathway precludes beta-amyloid formation, we searched for an alternative proteolytic processing pathway that can generate beta-peptide-bearing fragments from full-length beta APP. Incubation of living human endothelial cells with a beta APP antibody revealed reinternalization of mature beta APP from the cell surface and its targeting to endosomes/lysosomes. After cell-surface biotinylation, full-length biotinylated beta APP was recovered inside the cells. Purification of lysosomes directly demonstrated the presence of mature beta APP and an extensive array of beta-peptide-containing proteolytic products. Our results define a second processing pathway for beta APP and suggest that it may be responsible for generating amyloid-bearing fragments in Alzheimer's disease.

Alzheimer Disease↗
PubMed1975

A comparison of methods for the measurement of cardiac output and blood oxygen content.

A comparison has been made between the recently introduced thermal dilution method for measurement of cardiac output and the standard dye dilution technique. Two relatively new methods of measurement of blood oxygen content, one involving the measurement of oxygen tension after release of oxygen by carbon monoxide, and the other the measurement of current flow upon reduction of oxygen in a galvanic cell, have been compared with a standard indirect method of measurement of blood oxygen content. All three new methods fulfilled the criteria of accuracy and simplicity and compared favourably with the standard methods. Of the two new methods for measurement of oxygen content, that involving reduction of oxygen in a galvanic cell was superior by virtue of compactness and speed of operation.

Animals↗
PubMed1975

Ventricular function in experimental hemorrhagic shock.

Hemorrhagic shock was induced in 20 spontaneously breathing adult greyhounds by lowering the mean arterial pressure to 40 millimeters of mercury. In the first group of six dogs, reinfusion was carried out without delay; in a second group of six dogs, hypovolemia was continued for two hours, during which time the arterial pressure was permitted to rise in response to intact cardiovascular reflexes; in a third group of eight dogs, the mean arterial pressure was artificially maintained at 40 millimeters of mercury for two hours, initially by further bleeding. In all dogs in the latter group, take-up of blood from the reservoir was required during the second hour to maintain the arterial pressure, this being indicative of irreversible shock. In two of this group, fatal arrhythmias developed during reinfusion. All three groups showed evidence of ventricular dysfunction during and immediately after reinfusion, as indicated by disproportion between left ventricular stroke work and left ventricular end diastolic pressure, these data being used to construct ventricular function curves. Measurement of dP/dt maximum suggested that this dysfunction was due to impairment of myocardial contractility. The first two groups recovered normal function within one hour; the third group failed to have such a recovery. Evidence indicates that generalized tissue hypoxia, in addition to myocardial hypoxia, is important in the cause of cardiac dysfunction in irreversible shock.

Animals↗