Theodosia A. Kalfa

TL;DR: High-risk children with sickle cell anaemia and abnormal TCD velocities who have received at least 1 year of transfusions, and have no MRA-defined severe vasculopathy, hydroxycarbamide treatment can substitute for chronic transfusions to maintain TCD velocity and help to prevent primary stroke.

TL;DR: It is shown that physiologically enriched CD71+ erythroid cells in neonatal mice and human cord blood have distinctive immunosuppressive properties, and this finding challenges the idea that the susceptibility of neonates to infection reflects immune-cell-intrinsic defects and highlights processes that are developmentally more essential and inadvertently mitigate innate immune protection.

TL;DR: Mouse gene-targeting studies have provided convincing evidence that individual members of the Rho GTPase family are essential regulators of cell type-specific functions and stimuli-specific pathways in regulating hematopoietic stem cell interaction with bone marrow niche, erythropoiesis, and red blood cell actin dynamics, phagocyte migration and killing, and T- and B-cell maturation.

TL;DR: It is demonstrated that a significant part of ROS production in sickle cells is mediated enzymatically by NADPH oxidase, which is regulated by protein kinase C, Rac GTPase, and intracellular Ca(2+) signaling within the sickle RBC.

TL;DR: Normal production of RBCs requires that the antiapoptotic protein Bcl-xl be induced at end stages of differentiation in response to erythropoietin (Epo) signaling, which appears indispensable for regulation of erythrocyte production and maintenance of hematological homeostasis.