Joanna Frackowiak

Gdansk University of Technology · Department of Pharmaceutical Technology and Biochemistry

Introduction Exosome-enriched small extracellular vesicles (sEVs) are nanosized organelles known to participate in long distance communication between cells, including in the skin. Atopic dermatitis (AD) is a chronic inflammatory skin disease for which filaggrin (FLG) gene mutations are the strongest genetic risk factor. Filaggrin insufficiency aff...

The association between FLG loss-of-function mutations and the development of atopic dermatitis (AD) indicates that filaggrin is critical to skin barrier function; the mutations are also linked to additional allergic manifestations, but it is unknown how the skin may influence inflammation in distant tissues. Here we investigated the impact of fila...

Members of a novel class of anticancer compounds, exhibiting high antitumor activity, i.e. the unsymmetrical bisacridines (UAs), consist of two heteroaromatic ring systems. One of the ring systems is an imidazoacridinone moiety, with the skeleton identical to the structural base of Symadex. The second one is a 1-nitroacridine moiety, hence it may b...

The promoting effect of FLG loss-of-function mutations on the development of atopic dermatitis (AD) signifies the role of filaggrin in the formation of a protective skin barrier; FLG mutations are also linked to asthma, food allergy and allergic rhinitis despite the absence of the protein in the affected tissues (lungs, intestines, and the majority...

The promoting effect of FLG loss-of-function mutations on the development of atopic dermatitis (AD) signifies the role of filaggrin in the formation of a protective skin barrier; FLG mutations are also linked to asthma, food allergy and allergic rhinitis despite the absence of the protein in the affected tissues (lungs, intestines, and the majority...

Unsymmetrical bisacridines (UAs) represent a novel class of anticancer agents previously synthesized by our group. Our recent studies have demonstrated their high antitumor potential against multiple cancer cell lines and human tumor xenografts in nude mice. At the cellular level, these compounds affected 3D cancer spheroid growth and their cellula...

Candida albicans (C. albicans) infection is a potential complication in the individuals with atopic dermatitis (AD) and can affect clinical course of the disease. Here, using primary keratinocytes we determined that atopic milieu promotes changes in the interaction of small extracellular vesicles (sEVs) with dendritic cells and that this is further...

Unsymmetrical bisacridines (UAs), which represent a novel group of anticancer agents, were previously synthesized by our group. Our recent studies have shown high antitumor potential of UAs against multiple cancer cell lines and human tumor xenografts in nude mice. At the cellular level, they affected 3D cancer spheroid growth and their cellular up...

Carnivorous plants are exemplary natural sources of secondary metabolites with biological activity. However, the therapeutic antimicrobial potential of these compounds is limited due to intrinsic resistance of selected bacterial pathogens, among which Pseudomonas aeruginosa represents an extreme example. The objective of the study was to overcome t...

B-cell Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia (B-CLL) is the most common hematological disorder among middle-aged/elderly people in the Western countries. We have shown earlier that B-CLL cells exhibit elevated total amount and available activity of µ-calpain, belonging to a family of ubiquitous, strongly Ca-dependent proteases, involved in the control of pr...

http://www.impactjournals.com/oncotarget/index.php?journal=oncotarget&page=article&op=view&path%5B%5D=13259&author-preview=a8b The immune response is determined by the speed of the T cell reaction to antigens assured by a state of readiness for proliferation and cytokine secretion. Proliferation, apoptosis and motion of many cell types are controll...

A fast, economical, and reproducible method for nanoparticle synthesis has been developed in our laboratory. The reaction is performed in an aqueous environment and utilizes light emitted by commercially available 1 W light-emitting diodes (λ =420 nm) as the catalyst. This method does not require nanoparticle seeds or toxic chemicals. The irradiati...

Childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) blasts are characterized by inhibited apoptosis promoting fast disease progress. It is known that in chronic lymphocytic and acute myeloid leukemias the reduced apoptosis is strongly related with the activity of calpain-calpastatin system (CCS) composed of cytoplasmic proteases-calpains-performing the mo...

The mechanisms of maintenance of adequate numbers of B lymphocytes and of protective levels of immunoglobulins in the absence of antigenic (re)stimulation remain not fully understood. Meanwhile, our results presented here show that both peripheral blood naïve and memory B cells can be activated strongly and non-specifically (in a mitogen-like fashi...

Ubiquitous system of regulatory, calcium-dependent, cytoplasmic proteases -- calpains -- and their endogenous inhibitor -- calpastatin -- is implicated in the proteolytic regulation of activation, proliferation, and apoptosis of many cell types. However, it has not been thoroughly studied in resting and activated human lymphocytes yet, especially i...

We have recently described the presence of the erythropoietin receptor (EPO-R) on CD4(+) lymphocytes and demonstrated that its expression increases during their activation, reaching a level reported to be typical for erythroid progenitors. This observation suggests that EPO-R expression is modulated during lymphocyte activation, which may be import...