This book describes general glycobiology in emphasizing the structures, biosynthesis, glycosylation and distribution of the glycans and xenogenic glycoantigens in eukaryotic cells of mammals including mouse, swine, chimpanzee and human. In the middle, I have focused on topics in xenotransplantation glycobiology and expand descriptions of allogenic and xenoantigenic transplantation to open the dawn in insights into the origin of life. One of the biological diversity, named species diversity, is a phenomenon environmentally adapted from the evolutionary process for long period. The distinct structures of glycans discriminate each organism and are the essential molecular basis of the discrimination and difference between the organisms, giving an incompatibility between the different species. Diversity and variations in carbohydrate chain structures between family, species, kingdoms and domains mark the global pattern and signs of immune self- and non-self recognition. In human, diversity in ABH blood group antigens is observed in human family and this type pattern distinguishes individuals from a pan-family to non-dividable unit of the family. Blood transfusion and organ transplantation are impossible even in the allogenic cross between humans if carbohydrates are ignored. This explains how and how human beings are a lonely existence. ABH-related antibodies induce hemolysis or hyperacute or allograft rejection due to incompatible graft property even between the same species. The incompatibility is an immunologic rejection when the recipient host receives the tissues or organs from the different species of donors, as well-known in pig-to-human xenotransplantation. The immunologic incompatibility between the donor pigs and the recipient human are based on the evolutionary distance between pigs and humans. This distance allows a xenograft rejection between the 2 mammals. Modification or deletion of the specific gene locus for immune rejection on genome of donor animals disrupts the immunological recognition ligands of the donor organs, consequently preventing the immune rejection of the human recipient and xenograft rejection. This book helps undergraduate and graduate students, researcher and professors who are involved in the glycobiology and xenoantigenic biology with recent advances in the xenotransplantation basic and clinic.

This book reviews recent progress in understanding of the signaling and biochemistry of GM3 ganglioside in eukaryotic cells. GM3 is the simplest of the gangliosides and the precursor of other gangliosides. It is expressed in the outer leaflet of plasma cell membranes and has roles in the recognition, interaction, binding, adhesion, and motility of cells. In addition, GM3 has been documented to have functional roles in cell migration, proliferation, senescence, and apoptosis. The full range of topics of interest are addressed in the book. The early chapters discuss the synthesis of GM3, its molecular localization in cells, and its basic function as an interacting molecule. The ways in which GM3 exerts its effects via various growth factor receptors are fully explored. Current knowledge of the part played by GM3 in health and disease is discussed in depth. For example, its roles in preventing inflammation, inhibiting tumor angiogenesis and tumor growth, and suppressing arthritis are highlighted, and attention drawn to the significance of GM3 as a driver of impaired wound healing in diabetics. The book will be of interest to all who want a comprehensive update on research in this field.

Advances in Cancer Research provides invaluable information on the exciting and fast-moving field of cancer research. Here, once again, outstanding and original reviews are presented on a variety of topics. - Provides information on cancer research - Outstanding and original reviews - Suitable for researchers and students

"A compelling act of connection, leavened with humour, clear-eyed yet packed with hope." —Ann-Marie MacDonald A rare work of narrative non-fiction that illuminates a world most of us try not to see: the daily lives of the severely mentally ill, who are medicated, marginalized, locked away and shunned. Susan Doherty's groundbreaking book brings us a population of lost souls, ill-served by society, feared, shunted from locked wards to rooming houses to the streets to jail and back again. For the past 10 years, many who have cycled in and out of the locked wards of the Douglas Institute in Montreal found a friend in Susan, who volunteers on the wards and then accompanies her friends out into the world. With their full cooperation, she brings us intimate stories that challenge our views of people with mental illness. Through "Caroline Evans," a woman in her early sixties whom Susan has known since she was a bright, sunny school girl, we experience living with schizophrenia, such as when Caroline was convinced she could save her roommate from the devil by pouring boiling water into her ear... She has been through it all, including having to navigate an indifferent justice system that is incapable of serving the severely ill. Susan interleaves Caroline's story with vignettes about her other friends—stories that reveal their hopes, circumstances, personalities, humanity. Susan found that if she can hang in through the first 10-15 minutes of every coffee date with someone in the grip of psychosis, true communication results. Their "madness" is not otherworldly: instead it tells us something about how they're surviving their lives and what they've been through. The Ghost Garden carries a cargo of compassion and empathy that motivates us to re-examine our understanding of justice, society and humanity.

Those entering the field of transplantation are frequently unaware of the topics historical roots and even of the background on which modern discoveries in tolerance, histocompabatibility antigens, and xenotransplantation are based. A History of Transplantation Immunology is an account, written by one of the founding fathers of the field, of how tissue and organ transplantation has become one of the most successful branches of late 20th century medicine. The book helps place the work of contemporary scientists into its proper context and makes fascinating reading for immunologists in all stages of their career. - Describes landmarks in immunology and places them in historical context - Beautifully written by one of the founding fathers of the field - Portrays the surprising history of events in a colorful and readable manner - Contains biographical sketches of some of the pioneers - Illustrates the development of key ideas in immunology--tolerance, graft rejection, and transplantation - Foreword by Ray Owen

This book investigates a crucial-but forgotten-episode in the history of medicine. In it, Thomas Schlich systematically documents and analyzes the earliest clinical and experimental organ transplant surgeries. In so doing he lays open the historical origins of modern transplantation, offering a new and original analysis of its conceptual basis within a broader historical context. This first comprehensive account of the birth of modern transplant medicine examines how doctors and scientists between 1880 and 1930 developed the technology and rationale for performing surgical organ replacement within the epistemological and social context of experimental university medicine. The clinical application of organ replacement, however, met with formidable obstacles even as the procedure became more widely recognized. Schlich highlights various attempts to overcome these obstacles, including immunological explanations and new technologies of immune suppression, and documents the changes in surgical technique and research standards that led to the temporary abandonment of organ transplantation by the 1930s. Thomas Schlich is professor and Canada Research Chair in the History of Medicine at McGill University.

This title provides an illuminating examination of the current state of xenotransplantation – grafting or transplanting organs or tissues between members of different species – and how it might move forward into the clinic. To be sure, this is a critical topic, as a major problem that remains worldwide is an inadequate supply of organs from deceased human donors, severely limiting the number of organ transplants that can be performed each year. Based on presentations given at a major conference on xenotransplantation, this title includes important views from many leading experts who were invited to present their data and opinions on how xenotransplantation can advance into the clinic. Attention was concentrated on pig kidney and heart transplantation as it is in regard to these organs that most progress has been made. Collectively, these chapters effectively highlight the many advantages of xenotransplantation to patients with end-stage organ failure, thereby encouraging the mapping of a concrete pathway to clinical xenotransplantation. The book is organized across 22 chapters, beginning with background information on clinical and experimental xenotransplantation. Following this are discussions addressing how pigs can be genetically engineered for their organs to be resistant to the human immune response through deletion of pig xenoantigens, and the insertion of ‘protective’ human transgenes. Subsequent chapters analyze complications that arise in practice, comparing allotransplant and xenotransplant rejection. The selection of the ideal patients for the first clinical trials is discussed. Finally, the book concludes with an analysis on the regulatory, economic, and social aspects of this research, including FDA perspectives and the sensitive, psychosocial factors regarding allotransplantation and xenotransplantation. A major and timely addition to the literature, Clinical Xenotransplantation will be of great interest to all researchers, physicians, and academics from other disciplines with an interest in xenotransplantation.

Professor Leslie Baruch Brent (known in the scientific world as Leslie Brent) arrived in England late in 1938 in the first of the many Kindertransports. His German-Jewish family was among millions who were murdered by the Nazi regime. In 1943, at the tender age of eighteen, he volunteered for the armed forces, served in an infantry regiment, and was demobbed in 1947 with the rank of captain. Having studied zoology at the University of Birmingham he became an eminent immunologist in the field of tissue and organ transplantation. He was the junior member of a pioneering three-man team, led by Professor P.B. Medawar (they became known in the USA as 'the holy trinity'), which established and studied the phenomenon of 'immunological tolerance'. This vital discovery, which set up the 'holy grail' for clinical organ transplantation, is only now beginning to resonate clinically. It enabled them to transplant foreign tissues such as skin grafts without recourse to toxic drugs or to irradiation. The discovery led to the award of the 1960 Nobel Prize in Medicine and Physiology to Medawar. Professor Brent's memoirs provide a fascinating and disarmingly frank account of his personal and professional life, and they include a vivid description of the state of British politics in the last quarter of the twentieth century, in which he played an active and leading role at local level. His well-researched and thought-provoking, yet even-handed reflections on some of the most tumultuous events of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries - among them the Holocaust, the war years, the creation of the state of Israel and its consequences, his thoughts about France and its conduct under the Occupation, and the American-British attack on Iraq - reflect his passionate interest in the world around him, and they illuminate some of the most troubling events of our time.

The aim of the book is to provide a succinct overview of the current status of glycoscience from both basic biological and medical points of view and to propose future directions, in order to facilitate further integrations of glycoscience with other fields in biological and medical studies. Glycans (carbohydrate oligomers) are the so-called “building blocks” of carbohydrates, nucleic acids, proteins and lipids and play major roles in many biological phenomena as well as in various pathophysiological processes. However, this area of glycoscience has been neglected from the research community because glycan structures are very complex and functionally diverse and as compared to proteins and nucleic acids simple tools for the amplification, sequencing and auto-synthesis of glycans are not available. Many scientists in other fields of research have now realized that glycosylation, i.e. the addition of glycans to a protein backbone, is the most abundant post translational modification reactions and is an important field of research and sometimes they require a glycobiology and/or glycochemistry approach to be used. It is still difficult, however, for non-expert researchers to use these techniques. This book will provide numerous but simple overviews of current topics and protocols for the experiments. The book is aimed at university students and above, including non-experts in the field of glycoscience.