Biomedical subjects

C Farquharson

Publications and source records attributed to C Farquharson.

57 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

PubMed1987

Kidney lesions in copper-deficient rats.

Rats fed a diet deficient in copper were found, in comparison to control rats, to have lesions in the cortex, medulla and papilla of the kidney. Within the cortex, the lesions consisted of mild atrophy of the convoluted tubules, thickening of their basement membranes and fragmentation of the reticulin framework. In the medulla and papilla, selected zones of the loop of Henle were disorganized, with their epithelia appearing atrophied and their basement membranes fragmented and irregular. The epithelial cells of the collecting tubules were atrophied and vacuolated and their basement membranes thickened. Throughout the kidney, blood vessels were distented and engorged with large numbers of erythrocytes. The most likely explanation for these lesions is vascular underperfusion which could be due to a primary effect of copper deficiency on the kidney or could be secondary to the other cardiovascular lesions that are known to occur in copper deficiency.

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PubMed1985

Observations on the pancreas of cattle deficient in copper.

Lesions were found in the pancreas of clinically normal cattle of low copper status. In comparison with the pancreas of cattle with normal hepatic copper reserves, the abnormalities were an increase in the dry matter content and reduction in the concentrations of protein and copper in the wet tissue. Cytochrome oxidase activity and protein-to-RNA ratio were also reduced. Histologically, there were defects in acinar basement membranes, splitting and disorganization of acini, cellular atrophy and dissociation, and stromal proliferation. The pancreatic ductular system did not show atrophy or disorganization.

Animals↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Visualisation and selective elimination of a subpopulation of mitogen-responsive bone marrow stromal cells using bromodeoxyuridine and photo-induced cell killing.

Porcine bone marrow stromal cells (PBMSC) are a source of skeletogenic mesenchymal progenitor cells. Unfortunately, the heterogeneous nature of these cells in culture complicates the interpretation of their growth-factor responsiveness. We have therefore pulse-labelled mitogen-stimulated PBMSC with bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU) in order to study individual, growth-factor responsive cells in the presence of large numbers of nonresponsive PBMSC. Transfer of growing cells to low serum medium reduced BrdU labelling from 35% to 4% over a period of 24 hours. Subsequent addition of foetal calf serum (FCS) to serum-arrested cultures increased the number of BrdU positive cells to 54% by 16 hours. Addition of basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF) to serum-arrested cultures induced DNA synthesis in 28% of cell by 16 hours after stimulation. In order to selectively eliminate mitogen responsive cells from mixed cultures, BrdU-substituted cells were photosensitised with bisbenzimide and exposed to bright light. BrdU-labelled PBMSC died within 20-40 hours of bisbenzimide treatment and subsequent illumination, whereas BrdU-labelled cells survived in the dark despite treatment with bisbenzimide. The photokilling procedure appeared to have no long term effect upon the viability of non-BrdU-labelled cells because if subconfluent cells were brought to serum arrest prior to photokilling, no change in DNA content relative to controls was observed after a subsequent 4 or 7 day incubation in Dulbecco's modified Eagle's medium (DMEM)/10% FCS.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)

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