Jean-Luc Cracowski is MD, PhD, professor of Clinical Pharmacology at Grenoble University, France. He

is in charge of the Clinical Pharmacology Unit at the INSERM Clinical Research Center in Grenoble, France. His main area of research is the pharmacology and physiology of human skin MI-503 supplier microcirculation. This includes the development of methods to assess skin microvascular function, their use in physiological and pathological conditions such as scleroderma and primary Raynaud’s phenomenon, and the development of new pharmacological approaches. He is coauthor of 139 publications indexed in Medline. “
“Microcirculation (2010) 17, 32–38. doi: 10.1111/j.1549-8719.2009.00004.x Objective:  Fenestrations are pores in the

liver sinusoidal endothelium that facilitate the transfer of particulate substrates between the sinusoidal lumen and hepatocytes. Fenestrations express caveolin-1 and have structural similarities to caveolae, therefore might be a form of caveolae and caveolin-1 may be integral to fenestration structure and function. Therefore, fenestrations were studied in the livers of caveolin-1 knockout mice. Methods:  Scanning, transmission and immunogold electron microscopic techniques were used to study the liver sinusoidal endothelium and other tissues in caveolin-1 knockout and wild-type mice. Results:  Comparison of fenestrations in wild-type and knockout mice did not reveal any differences on either scanning or transmission electron microscopy. The diameter Baricitinib of the fenestrations was not significantly different (74 ± 13 nm knockout mice KU-57788 in vitro vs 78 ± 12 nm wild-type mice) nor was the fenestration porosity (6.5 ± 2.1 knockout vs 7.3 ± 2.4% wild-type mice). In contrast, adipocytes and blood vessels in other tissues lacked caveolae in the knockout mice. Caveolin-1 immunogold of livers of wild-type mice indicated sparse expression in sinusoidal endothelial cells. Conclusions:  The normal structure of fenestrations in the liver sinusoidal endothelium is not dependent upon

caveolin-1 and fenestrations are not a form of caveolae. “
“Please cite this paper as: Emmett, Lanati, Dunn, Stone and Bates (2011). CCR7 Mediates Directed Growth of Melanomas Towards Lymphatics. Microcirculation 18(3), 172–182. Objective:  To determine whether chemotactic-metastasis, the preferential growth of melanomas towards areas of high lymphatic density, is CCL21/CCR7 dependent in vivo. Lymphatic endothelial cells (LECs) produce the chemokine CCL21. Metastatic melanoma cells express CCR7, its receptor, and exhibit chemotactic-metastasis, whereby metastatic cells recognise and grow towards areas of higher lymphatic density. Methods:  We used two in vivo models of directional growth towards depots of LECs of melanoma cells over-expressing CCR7.