Browsing by Author "Yang, Lucy"

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    Roles of muscle-associated cells during muscle regeneration.
    (2018-11-27) Yang, Lucy; Ruel, Tyler; Kocha, Katrinka; Huang, Peng
    Skeletal muscles control many essential functions that we constantly perform including walking, eating, and breathing. Any diseases that compromise muscle function, such as muscular dystrophy, will have a noticeable impact on the quality of a person’s life. Understanding molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying muscle regeneration will help design new therapeutic approaches to promote muscle injury repair and ameliorate different muscular disorders. Current research mostly focus on known muscle stem cells (satellite cells), while little is known about other types of muscle-associated cells and how they contribute to muscle regeneration. For example, some studies have found that fibro/adipogenic progenitors do not generate muscle fibers but create microenvironments that promote muscle stem cell activity during regeneration instead. My research project aims to determine the functions and responses of different muscle-associated cells during muscle injury repair using zebrafish as a model system. We hypothesize that each type of muscle-associated cell has a distinct regulatory function that aids the muscle regeneration process. To address this topic, I first optimized two complementary techniques to section adult muscle tissues — I used vibratome sectioning to generate thicker sections to maintain 3-dimensional architecture and cryosectioning to prepare thin sections for histological staining. Combining these techniques with different muscle injury models, I have performed detailed time course experiments to determine how muscle repair progresses with respect to either glycerol or cardiotoxin-induced injury. Preliminary results have shown that muscle injury repair in adult zebrafish is dependent on the type of injury. Thus far, glycerol-injected fish seem to suffer catastrophic muscle damage that is still evident 5 days post-injury. Next, I will determine how different types of muscle-associated cells contribute to muscle regeneration under different injury conditions.
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    Synergy of anti-leukemic effects between anti-thymocyte globulin, busulfan, and fludarabine
    (2017-11-30) Yang, Lucy; Dabas, Rosy; Storek, Jan
    Antithymocyte Globulin (ATG) is an anti-GvHD (Graft versus Host Disease) drug that has recently been shown to have anti-leukemic effects. In Alberta, Busulfan and Fludarabine are used to treat acute myeloid leukemia. However, both drugs also lead to the death of healthy cells within the body, especially with increased doses. It would be beneficial to study ways to maintain their effects while decreasing their toxicity, such as synergy with ATG. Different concentrations of ATG were combined with different concentrations of Busulfan and Fludarabine separately to test their effects on pre-conditioned leukemia cell samples from acute myeloid leukemia patients. Cell death was quantified using flow cytometry. The cells from five patients were used and combined into graphs that compared cells dyed by 7AAD (dead cells) between the drugs. In some of the combinations, there appeared to be increased cell death in test tubes with a combination of ATG with Busulfan or ATG with Fludarabine. However, with the use of the Wilcoxon Matched Pairs Test, the difference was deemed not significant. Even though there were no significant differences, it could be due to the low sample size. Furthermore, other concentrations not tested in this experiment could yield better results. If synergy exists between ATG and Busulfan or Fludarabine, the two drugs should be moved up in patients’ conditioning schedules to allow synergism to occur, leading to more cancer cell death with less risk for side effects.