Bücher veröffentlicht von Springer Basel

Inhibition of the proton pump in the parietal cells has been established as the main therapeutic principle in the treatment of acid-related diseases, such as peptic ulcer and gastro-oesophageal reflux.

The accumulation of white blood cells is a hallmark of inflammation. The penetra­ tion through the vessel walls and the infiltration around the inflammatory stimulus is a complex process which involves active adherence and directed migration of the inflammatory cells. Chemotactic factors stimulate both adherence and migration. Technical tools such as the Boyden chamber [1] made it possible to study leukocyte migration in vitro. This technique allows differentiation between migration direct­ ed towards a chemotactic stimulus and non-directed migration. Until a decade ago only two naturally occurring molecules had been clearly iden­ tified as potent chemotactic attractants of neutrophilic granulocytes. They were the split product of the fifth complement component C5a [2] and the arachidonic acid metabolite leukotriene B4 [3]. In 1986, a novel human monocyte-derived chemo­ taxin attracting neutrophilic granulocytes with a similar potency was found [4]. This report was quickly confirmed by several groups [5-8]. The new factor was purified, cloned and sequenced [9, 10]. The term "interleukin 8" (IL-8) replaced the various names proposed previously [4-8]. Sequence data revealed that IL-8 belonged to a large family of chemotactic cytokines, now called "chemokines" [11]. Four subfamilies were distinguished on the basis of the number and position of the first cysteine residues. They are desig­ nated accordingly as C, CC, CXC and CX C chemokines [11-13]. The number of 3 human chemokines identified so far is close to 40 [11-13].

In recent years, the area of pharmacotherapy of GI inflammation has witnessed important progress, with new drugs and therapeutic approaches being introduced. The volume reviews the pharmacotherapy of selected gastrointestinal inflammatory conditions chosen on the basis of their clinical importance and/or the areas where important and exciting progress has been made recently. Besides discussing current pharmacotherapy to treat the most important GI inflammation conditions, the book also indicates possible future therapeutic avenues likely to become available in a few years.The book is of interest to various sectors of the scientific community ranging from clinicians to pharmacologists and from biochemists to microbiologists, who will find it a useful tool for their clinical practice and research activity.

The purpose of this volume in the Progress in Inflammation Research series is to provide the biomedical and clinical researcher with a state-of-the-art insight in the role of cytokines in joint inflammation and joint destruction.

Since the discovery of the bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) more than 15 years ago, there has been an unpredicted explosion of both basic scientific discoveries and clinical reports on their use from institutions all over the world.

Such coverage, as presented in this volume, may help further understanding and bring new approaches to therapeutics.The first section of the book discusses inflammatory mechanisms, studied in cellular and animal studies.

Arachidonic acid (AA) and other 20 or 22-carbon polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) are precursors of lipid mediators of inflammation known as eicosanoids. These mediators are critical in disease processes and in regulating normal cell function. Remodeling is important in maintaining homeostasis and in regulating cell function by dictating how PUFAs are converted to lipid mediators of inflammation. Thus, PUFA remodeling is a critical process in the biosynthesis of a multitude of mediators, and understanding this process will unravel better therapeutic targets for controlling inflammatory diseases such as asthma and Alzheimer¿s disease.AA metabolism is described in an integrated context linking the remodeling processes with the biosynthesis of mediators and diseases. By following the movement of the substrate (AA), the volume describes how upstream biosynthetic pathways influence the formation of lipid mediators of inflammation, showing the metabolic interrelationship between all AA-derived mediators.

Gene therapy for inflammatory diseases is a new , burgeoning field of medicine. Edited by the undisputed pioneers of this area of research, this volume is the first devoted to its topic. It contains thirteen chapters, each written by leaders in their respective fields, that summarize the state of the art in developing novel, gene based treatments for inflammatory diseases. As well as providing an introduction to the basic concepts of gene therapy and the use of naked DNA approaches, the book describes the advances that have been made in applying them to arthritis, lupus, multiple sclerosis, diabetes, Sjogren`s syndrome and transplantation.One chapter is devoted to discussing the first human clinical trials that apply gene therapy to the treatment of an inflammatory disease. As well as providing novel therapeutic approaches, gene therapy facilitates the development of new and improved animal models of disease; a chapter describing these advances is also included. As an up-to-date, timely book written by th

Combinatorial chemistry in conjunction with High Throughput Screening (HTS) is revolutionizing the drug discovery process.

The TGF-13 superfamily is a large and expanding multigene family which in verte­ brates includes the TGF-13 proteins themselves, the bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs), the growth and differentiation factors (GDF), the activins/inhibins (INH), Mullerian inhibitory substance (MIS), glial derived neurotropic factor (GDNF) and more recently macrophage inhibitory cytokine 1 (MIC-1). They are characterised by conserved structural elements and a broad commonality of function. Major structural elements All members of the TGF-13 superfamily contain as their major structural hallmark a conserved spacing and distribution of seven cysteine residues. This structure is known as the cysteine knot and tethers together regions of the peptide as well as binding the two chains of the dimer to each other. High resolution structures are now available on proteins from three families within this group including glial derived neurotropic factor (GDNF), BMP-7 and several of the TGF-13s. Despite low similarity between some of these proteins (eg, TGF-13s and GDNF are only 13% identical) they share a strikingly similar three dimensional conformation (Fig. 1). These structural elements imbue the protein with some of its familial characteristics. These include its physico-chemical stability due to tight tethering of portions of the peptide chain via criss-crossing disulphide bonds. Much of its surfaces are coated with hydrophobic patches leading to a propensity to bind non-specifically to other proteins as well as to its self. This also causes a marked propensity for aggregation when the recombinant protein is present at high concentration.

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) was first identified in 1989 as the etiologic agent of non-A, non-B hepatitis [1] and is currently recognized as the leading cause of chronic liver disease worldwide.

In the last ten years, major strides have been made in defining the presence and role of inflammation in atherosclerosis as well as in injury to the tissues that occurs after episodes of ischemia and reperfusion.

Philanthropic societies funded by the Rockefeller family were prominent in the social history of the twentieth century, for their involvement in medicine and applied science. This book provides the first detailed study of their relatively brief but nonetheless influential foray into the field of mathematics.

Heart failure research is a most active area of research in academic, industrial and government-sponsored research and receives intense clinical attention.

Polymer and cell dynamics play an important role in processes like tumor growth, metastasis, embryogenesis, immune reactions and regeneration.

Several new developments in the field of neuroimmunology with focus on the brain-to-immune system communication have been the incentive for this PIR volume. It covers topics such as brain-immune interactions, the impact of stress on the immune response, pain and immunosuppression, the modulation of inflammation and pain by the sympathetic nervous system, consequences of nerve injury for the immune system, neuronal mechanisms of immune cell recruitment, and the modulation of the immune response by corticotropin-releasing hormone or adenosine. The authors are a unique group of scientists who are all interested in brain-to-immune interactions; however, each from a different perspective. The volume will serve both neurobiologists and immunologists to understand the influence of the central nervous system on peripheral inflammation. Many aspects of this book will also be stimulating for researchers in the pain field.

The most specific immune response to chemicals and drugs that cause allergic contact dermatitis, respiratory disease and adverse drug reactions is the highly antigen-specific T lymphocyte response.

Here is a comprehensive overview of the development of Onbrez Breezhaler, a newly approved once-daily inhaled beta2 agonist for treating COPD. Covers design and pre-clinical pharmacology of the molecule, early clinical development, efficacy studies and more.

Nonnenmacher of the "anatomy" of the eigenmodes of quantized chaotic systems, namely of their macroscopic localization properties, as ruled by the Quantum Ergodic theorem, and of the deep mathematical challenge posed by their fluctuations at the microscopic scale;

This book provides a detailed overview of B-cell directed therapies in patients with rheumatic and systemic autoimmune diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, Sjoegren syndrome, ANCA-associated vasculitis and cryoglobulinemia.

The inflammasome was first described in 2002 as a molecular complex activating proinflammatory caspases and therefore regulating the maturation and biological activities of cytokines such as IL-1 and IL-18.

The book consists of solicited articles from a select group of mathematicians and physicists working at the interface between positivity and the geometry, combinatorics or analysis of polynomials of one or several variables.

This book is an introduction to the subject of mean curvature flow of hypersurfaces with special emphasis on the analysis of singularities. This flow occurs in the description of the evolution of numerous physical models where the energy is given by the area of the interfaces. These notes provide a detailed discussion of the classical parametric approach (mainly developed by R. Hamilton and G. Huisken). They are well suited for a course at PhD/PostDoc level and can be useful for any researcher interested in a solid introduction to the technical issues of the field. All the proofs are carefully written, often simplified, and contain several comments. Moreover, the author revisited and organized a large amount of material scattered around in literature in the last 25 years.

Stochastic analysis has a variety of applications to biological systems as well as physical and engineering problems, and its applications to finance and insurance have bloomed exponentially in recent times.

The emergence of H5N1 avian influenza in 1997 and of the influenza A H1N1 of swine origin in 2009 calls for new, rapid and sustainable solutions for both seasonal and pandemic influenza viruses.

The book presents a general overview of mathematical models in the context of evolution.

This book is devoted to conservative realizations of various classes of Stieltjes, inverse Stieltjes, and general Herglotz-Nevanlinna functions as impedance functions of linear systems. The main feature of the monograph is a new approach to the realization theory profoundly involving developed extension theory in triplets of rigged Hilbert spaces and unbounded operators as state-space operators of linear systems. The connections of the realization theory to systems with accretive, sectorial, and contractive state-space operators as well as to the Phillips-Kato sectorial extension problem, the Krein-von Neumann and Friedrichs extremal extensions are provided. Among other results the book contains applications to the inverse problems for linear systems with non-self-adjoint Schrodinger operators, Jacobi matrices, and to the Nevanlinna-Pick system interpolation.

These proceedings represent the current state of research on the topics 'boundary theory' and 'spectral and probability theory' of random walks on infinite graphs.

The volume contains contributions from authors from a large variety of countries on different aspects of partial differential equations, such as evolution equations and estimates for their solutions, control theory, inverse problems, nonlinear equations, elliptic theory on singular domains, numerical approaches.