Gene D. LeSage, Domenico Alvaro, Shannon Glaser, Heather Francis, Luca Marucci, Tania Roskams, Jo Lynne Phinizy, Marco Marzioni, Antonio Benedetti, Silvia Taffetani, Barbara Barbaro, Giammarco Fava, Yoshiyuki Ueno, Gianfranco Alpini – 14 October 2004 – Acetylcholine potentiates secretin‐stimulated ductal secretion by Ca2+‐calcineurin–mediated modulation of adenylyl cyclase. D2 dopaminergic receptor agonists inhibit secretin‐stimulated ductal secretion via activation of protein kinase C (PKC)‐γ.

Mark A. Exley, Margaret James Koziel – 14 October 2004 – Much of the hepatology literature to date has focused on the adaptive, antigen‐specific response mediated by classical T‐cell populations in both the protection and pathogenesis of liver disease. However, the liver is selectively enriched for cells representative of innate immunity, including natural killer T (NKT) cells. In particular, certain CD1d‐reactive T cells are present at much higher frequencies in the liver than in the peripheral blood.

Sabina Janciauskiene, Sten Eriksson, Francesco Callea, Meera Mallya, Aiwu Zhou, Kuniaki Seyama, Satoru Hata, David A. Lomas – 14 October 2004 – Several point mutations of α1‐antitrypsin cause a perturbation in protein structure with consequent polymerization and intracellular accumulation. The retention of polymers of α1‐antitrypsin within hepatocytes results in protein overload that in turn is associated with juvenile hepatitis, cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma.

Suchitra Sumitran‐Holgersson, Xupeng Ge, Azza Karrar, Bo Xu, Silvia Nava, Ulrika Broomé, Grzegorz Nowak, Bo‐Göran Ericzon – 14 October 2004 – Liver sinusoidal endothelial cells (LSECs) may be implicated in the induction of liver allograft rejections. We studied the clinical consequences of LSEC‐reactive antibodies and their functional capacity in modulating T‐cell responses during acute rejections. Pre‐ and posttransplant sera and T lymphocytes from 95 liver transplant patients were used in this study. LSECs were isolated from normal healthy liver.

Ariel E. Feldstein, Gregory J. Gores – 14 October 2004

Roniel Cabrera, Zhengkun Tu, Yiling Xu, Roberto J. Firpi, Hugo R. Rosen, Chen Liu, David R. Nelson – 14 October 2004 – The CD4+CD25+ regulatory T lymphocytes have been implicated in suppressing T cell immune responses. Our aim was to characterize the frequency, phenotype, function, and specificity of CD4+CD25+ T cells in hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection.

Kiminori Kimura, Masahito Nagaki, Shinji Takai, Shinichi Satake, Hisataka Moriwaki – 14 October 2004 – Nuclear factor κB (NF‐κB) has a central role in coordinating the expression of a wide variety of genes that control immune responses and is also recognized as an antiapoptotic transcription factor. Here, we focused on the role of the NF‐κB signaling pathway in the interaction between inflammatory cells and hepatocytes in liver inflammation.

Takuya Miyagi, Tetsuo Takehara, Tomohide Tatsumi, Takahiro Suzuki, Masahisa Jinushi, Yoshiyuki Kanazawa, Naoki Hiramatsu, Tatsuya Kanto, Shingo Tsuji, Masatsugu Hori, Norio Hayashi – 14 October 2004 – Concanavalin A (ConA), directly injected into mice, induces T cell–mediated liver injury. However, it remains unclear whether ConA injection can activate innate immune cells, including natural killer (NK) cells and natural killer T (NKT) cells, both of which exist abundantly in the liver.

Gabriele Sass, Stefan Seyfried, Miguel Parreira Soares, Kenichiro Yamashita, Elzbieta Kaczmarek, Winfried L. Neuhuber, Gisa Tiegs – 14 October 2004 – Induction of the heme‐degrading enzyme heme oxygenase‐1 (HO‐1) has been shown to be beneficial in terms of improvement of liver allograft survival and prevention of CD95‐mediated apoptosis in the liver.

Adrian “Rusty” Reuben – 14 October 2004