[Chronic tendinopathies and platelet-rich plasma]

Platelets contain growth factors released during their degranulation following activation. These growth factors promote tissue remodeling, wound healing and angiogenesis. Currently, the clinical effect of Platelet-Rich Plasma (PRP) is still discussed, or even controversial. Our researches have assessed the effectiveness of PRP on the healing of animal tendons and human beings suffering from chronic jumper's knee.

[Immune recovery following allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation]

Allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (alloHCT) is frequently used as treatment for patients with hematological malignancies. Its efficacy depends in part on the destruction of recipient tumor cells by donor immune cells contained in the graft (graft-versus-tumor effects), underlying the interest of studying donor immune recovery after alloHCT. Further, donor immune cells play an important role in the prevention and treatment of infections after alloHCT, and are the cause of graft-versus-host disease (GVHD). This article reviews the mechanisms of immune recovery after allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (alloHCT), as well as techniques currently used to monitor immune function following alloHCT.

The A5 gene of alcelaphine herpesvirus 1 encodes a constitutively active G-protein-coupled receptor that is non-essential for the induction of malignant catarrhal fever in rabbits

Many gammaherpesviruses encode G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). Several in vivo studies have revealed that gammaherpesvirus GPCRs are important for viral replication and for virus-induced pathogenesis. The gammaherpesvirus alcelaphine herpesvirus 1 (AlHV-1) is carried asymptomatically by wildebeest, but causes malignant catarrhal fever (MCF) following cross-species transmission to a variety of susceptible species. The A5 ORF of the AlHV-1 genome encodes a putative GPCR. In the present study, we investigated whether A5 encodes a functional GPCR and addressed its role in viral replication and in the pathogenesis of MCF. In silico analysis supported the hypothesis that A5 could encode a functional GPCR as its expression product contained several hallmark features of GPCRs. Expression of A5 as tagged proteins in various cell lines revealed that A5 localizes in cell membranes, including the plasma membrane. Using [35S]GTPgammaS and reporter gene assays, we found that A5 is able to constitutively couple to alpha i-type G-proteins in transfected cells, and that this interaction is able to inhibit forskolin-triggered cAMP response element-binding protein (CREB) activation. Finally, using an AlHV-1 BAC clone, we produced a strain deleted for A5 and a revertant strain. Interestingly, the strain deleted for A5 replicated comparably to the wild-type parental strain and induced MCF in rabbits that was indistinguishable from that of the parental strain. The present study is the first to investigate the role of an individual gene of AlHV-1 in MCF pathogenesis.