Daiva Bironaite

Valstybinis mokslinių tyrimų institutas Inovatyvios medicinos centras · Department of Regenerative Medicine

The degradation of cartilage, due to trauma, mechanical load or diseases, results in abundant loss of extracellular matrix (ECM) integrity and development of osteoarthritis (OA). Chondroitin sulfate (CS) is a member of the highly sulfated glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) and a primary component of cartilage tissue ECM. In this study, we aimed to investiga...

Articular cartilage is vulnerable to mechanical overload and has limited ability to restore lesions, which leads to the development of chronic diseases such as osteoarthritis (OA). In this study, the chondrogenic responses of human bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMMSCs) and OA cartilage-derived chondrocytes in 3D chondroitin sulfate-tyramine/g...

The evolving field of the microbiome and microbiota has become a popular research topic. The human microbiome is defined as a new organ and is considered a living community of commensal, symbiotic and pathogenic microorganisms within a certain body space. The term 'microbiome' is used to define the entire genome of the microbiota. Bacteria, archaea...

Muscle injuries, degenerative diseases and other lesions negatively affect functioning of human skeletomuscular system and thus quality of life. Therefore, the investigation of molecular mechanisms, stimulating myogenic differentiation of primary skeletal-muscle-derived mesenchymal stem/stromal cells (SM-MSCs), is actual and needed. The aim of the...

The role of parvovirus B19 (PVB19) in the pathogenesis of idiopathic dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) remains poorly understood. Therefore, we have measured the levels of inflammation, fibrosis, apoptosis, and necrosis in endomyocardial biopsies (EMBs) and sera of nonischemic PVB19-positive (n = 14) and PVB19-negative (n = 18) DCM patients. Chronic per...

Osteoarthritis (OA) and cardiovascular diseases (CVD) share many similar features, including similar risk factors and molecular mechanisms. A great number of cardiovascular drugs act via different ion channels and change ion balance, thus modulating cell metabolism, osmotic responses, turnover of cartilage extracellular matrix and inflammation. The...

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a long-term chronic joint disease characterized by the deterioration of bones and cartilage, which results in rubbing of bones which causes joint stiffness, pain, and restriction of movement. Tissue engineering strategies for repairing damaged and diseased cartilage tissue have been widely studied with various types of stem c...

Parvovirus B19 (B19V) is a widespread human pathogen possessing a high tropism for erythroid precursor cells. However, the persistence or active replication of B19V in endothelial cells (EC) has been detected in diverse human pathologies. The VP1 unique region (VP1u) of the viral capsid has been reported to act as a major determinant of viral tropi...

Three-dimensional (3D) cell cultivation systems in vitro are promising biomodels to study the metabolic processes of healthy and diseased human heart cells. Cardiac 3D-spheroids are mimicking cell living conditions and, therefore, they can be employed to investigate processes that occur in both extra-cellular and intra-cellular environments. In thi...

Background: In this study the effect of histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor suberoylanilide hydroxamic acid (SAHA) on the energetic status and cardiomyogenic differentiation of human healthy and dilated myocardium-derived mesenchymal stromal cells (hmMSC) have been investigated. Methods: The hmMSC were isolated from the healthy and dilated post...

Cardiac muscle is the hardest working muscle in the body, pumping approximately 70 g of blood with every heartbeat, circulating 9500 l of blood daily and contracting over 3 billion times during the average human’s life. Heart failure – a heterogeneous syndrome – is a major and increasing health care problem worldwide and a leading cause of hospital...

In this study the redox activity of human myocardium‐derived mesenchymal stem cells (hmMSC) were investigated by redox‐competition (RC‐SECM) and generation‐collection (GC‐SECM) modes of scanning electrochemical microscopy (SECM), using 2‐methylnaphthalene‐1,4‐dione (menadione, MD) as a redox mediator. The redox activity of human healthy and dilated...

Background and objectives: T-cadherin (T-cad) is one of the adiponectin receptors abundantly expressed in the heart and blood vessels. Experimental studies show that T-cad sequesters adiponectin in cardiovascular tissues and is critical for adiponectin-mediated cardio-protection. However, there are no data connecting cardiac T-cad levels with human...

Background Non-ischemic dilated cardiomyopathy (niDCM) is a common debilitating disease leading to heart failure and poor prognosis. Therefore, a reliable diagnosis of niDCM and search of prognostic biomarkers is a task of paramount importance preventing final destruction of myocardium and improving the outcomes of the disease. The aim of the study...

Scanning electrochemical microscopy (SECM) is an electroanalytical technique with wide application [1,2]. SECM in this study have been applied for the investigation of human heart myocardium-derived mesenchymal stem cells (MSC). The MCS were isolated from the muscle biopsies of left ventricle taken from the healthy and pathological (dilated myocard...

Cardiovascular diseases are the most common cause of human death in the developing world. Extensive evidence indicates that various toxic environmental factors and unhealthy lifestyle choices contribute to the risk, incidence and severity of cardiovascular diseases. Alterations in the genetic level of myocardium affects normal heart development and...

Scanning electrochemical microscopy (SECM) has been used for the investigations of redox measurements and/or electrical stimulations of the cells. In this study we have investigated human myocardium-derived mesenchymal stem cells (hmMSC), isolated from healthy and dilated left ventricles. Human hmMSC were isolated from the post operation biopsies o...

Scanning electrochemical microscopy (SECM) is a electroanalytical technique investigating enzymatic reactions, occurring in enzyme-based biosensors or living cells [1,2]. SECM can be used for the investigations of redox measurements and/or electrical stimulations of the cells. In this study we investigated human skeletal muscle-derived mesenchymal...

Clinical interpretation of patients’ plasma adiponectin (APN) remains challenging; its value as biomarker in dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) is equivocal. We evaluated whether circulating APN level is an independent predictor of composite outcome: death, left ventricle assist device (LVAD) implantation, and heart transplantation (HT) in patients with...

Background . Parvovirus B19 (B19V) is a common finding in endomyocardial biopsy specimens from myocarditis and dilated cardiomyopathy patients. However, current understanding of how B19V is contributing to cardiac damage is rather limited due to the lack of appropriate mice models. In this work we demonstrate that immunization of BALB/c mice with t...

Background: Inflammatory dilated cardiomyopathy (iDCM) is a common debilitating disease with poor prognosis that often leads to heart failure and may require heart transplantation. The aim of this study was to evaluate sera and biopsy samples from chronic iDCM patients, and to investigate molecular mechanism associated with left ventricular remode...

Background: Inflammation plays a significant role in myocardial damage and is considered to be involved in the pathogenesis of myocarditis, which often progresses to inflammatory dilated cardiomyopathy (iDCM). Myocarditis is known to result in fibrosis, inflammatory exudates, adverse ventricular remodeling and, eventually, cardiac failure. The leve...

Background Inflammation plays a significant role in myocardial damage and is considered to be involved in the pathogenesis of myocarditis, which often progresses to inflammatory dilated cardiomyopathy (iDCM). Myocarditis is known to result in fibrosis, inflammatory exudates, adverse ventricular remodeling and, eventually, cardiac failure. The level...

Cardiac fibrosis disrupts the normal myocardial structure and has a direct impact on heart function and survival. Despite already available digital methods, the pathologist’s visual score is still widely considered as ground truth and used as a primary method in histomorphometric evaluations. The aim of this study was to compare the accuracy of dig...

Introduction: Myocarditis may be induced by various bacteria or virus, autoimmune diseases, vasculitis, and chemicals. The progress of acute viral myocarditis is mainly related to the inflammatory response with subsequent deleterious effects, including dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) which often can be treated only by heart transplantation. Therefore,...

Introduction: Inflammatory dilated cardiomyopathy (iDCM) is a common debilitating disease with poor prognosis that often requires heart transplantation. It often starts as a myocarditis and is caused by a variety of toxic agents initiating inflammation. The chronic exposure of myocardium to inflammatory insults might subsequently initiate apoptosis...

The involvement of extra-cellular signal-regulated kinases 1 and 2 (ERK1,2), stress kinase p38 and c-Jun NH2 -terminal kinases 1 and 2 (JNK1,2) on Hsp70-upregulation following mild heat shock, and resulting cell protection, was studied on rabbit primary myoblasts. Cells subjected to heat stress (42°C; 60 min) showed a significantly enhanced amount...

We induced upregulation of stanniocalcin-1 (STC-1) by various mild and long lasting stresses and assayed its influence on mitochondrial membrane potential (MMP) in the neural crest-derived cell line Paju. The obtained data showed that starvation (24-96h), exposure to 10nM TPA, and low concentrations (0.05-1μM) of As2O3 significantly (3-5 times) upr...

Improvement in the yield of adult organism stem cells, and the ability to manage their differentiation and survival potential are the major goals in their application in regenerative medicine and in the adult stem cell research. We have demonstrated that adult rabbit muscle-derived cell lines with an unlimited proliferative potential in vitro can d...

The inducible Hsp70 family members (iHsp70, Hsp72 and Hsp70) are highly conserved proteins that act as molecular chaperones and promote cell survival during various forms of stress. Our data indicate that cultured adult rabbit myoblasts do not express iHsp70 under normal growth conditions, although an increased expression of that particular protein...

Various pathological processes caused by toxic environmental impacts negatively af-fect all types of cells including stem cells. Heat shock and other stresses are known to afford protection of various intracellular systems by inducing iHsp70 (inducible heat shock protein 70). The goal of this study was to investigate various ways of iHsp70 in-ducti...

Apoptosis in heart failure has been intensively investigated in vitro and in vivo. Stem cells have therapeutic value in the direct treatment of diseases, including cardiovascular disease. The main drawback of stem cell therapy is their poor survival in the diseased tissues. Since intracellular mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs) actively part...

2+ signaling involved in the induction of apopto- sis. We found that 2-mercaptoethanol (2-ME) and N-acetyl-L-cysteine (NAC) were the best inhibitors of apoptosis: direct quenching of free radicals and protection of SH- group were most effective for the HL-60 cell line. Butyl- hydroxytoluene (BHT) and N, N'-diphenyl-p-phenylene diamine (DPPD), lipid...

Anticancer treatments are supposed to kill cancer cells by activating the key elements of the apoptosis program. Diverse upstream signaling pathways converge and activate the core components of cell death ma-chinery. Transcription factor encoding protein c-Jun provides a useful model for studying the complexity and specificity of apoptotic signalin...