Targeting tyrosine kinases for treatment of ocular tumors

Metabolic profiling of 19 amino acids in triptolide-induced liver injured rats by gas chromatography-triple quadrupole mass spectrometry

The liver is an important organ for amino acid metabolism, and its damage can be reflected in the changes of amino acid level in the body. Triptolide (TP) has broad anti-inflammatory and anti-tumor activities, but its clinical application is limited due to hepatotoxicity. In this work, a simple, accurate and sensitive gas chromatography-triple quadrupole mass spectrometry (GC-QqQ-MS/MS) method was developed and validated for evaluating the serum levels of amino acids from control and TP-induced liver injured rats, and chemometric analysis was employed for amino acid metabolic profiles analysis. It was found that 11 amino acids showed significant changes after TP administration, and they were mainly involved in 5 metabolic pathways that are phenylalanine, tyrosine and tryptophan biosynthesis, alanine, aspartate and glutamate metabolism, glutamine and glutamate metabolism, phenylalanine metabolism and arginine biosynthesis. Five amino acids including tyrosine, glutamine, glutamic acid, tryptophan and alanine were identified as biomarkers of TP hepatotoxicity by further analysis. These results indicated that the novel amino acid metabolic profiling study based on the GC-QqQ-MS/MS provided not only exact concentrations of serum amino acids, but also a prospective methodology for evaluation of chemically induced liver injury.

Identification of prognostic alternative splicing signatures in uveal melanoma

PURPOSE

Alternative splicing (AS) events were reportedly associated with the development of multiple cancers. The study was designed to provide a comprehensive analysis of AS events and explore their potential prognostic value in uveal melanoma (UM).

METHODS

The prognostic AS events, identified based on the data of 80 UM patients obtained from The Cancer Genome Atlas, were further screened and analyzed for construction of prognostic signatures by using LASSO regression and multivariate Cox model. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis was used to evaluate the prognostic value. The AS events-related functional pathways were explored by gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA). The difference between two subgroups in terms of treatment options was investigated. The regulatory network between prognostic AS events and splicing factors (SFs) was then constructed.

RESULTS

A total of 1014 AS events were identified as prognostic AS events. Five prognostic AS events were involved in the construction of prognostic signatures, including AKAP2/87175/AP, RGMA/32575/ES, DNASE1L1/90581/ES, BIN1/55198/ES and ERCC2/50430/AT. UM patients were then divided into two subgroups. Prognostic AS signatures had an excellent performance in predicting the survival of UM patients, with an area under curve (AUC) of 0.962. GSEA results suggested several splicing-associated mechanisms, including cellular metabolic process and apoptosis. Low-risk subgroup could be more sensitive to drugs. A higher expression of immune checkpoint genes was observed in high-risk group than in low-risk group. SFs-AS regulatory network also revealed significant association between AS events and SFs.

CONCLUSIONS

Aberrant AS events in UM patients might serve as prognostic predictors.

The Role of Intraarterial Chemotherapy in the Management of Retinoblastoma

Introduction. Retinoblastoma is the most common primary intraocular neoplasm in children. With the advances in medicine, the armamentarium of available treatment modalities has grown. Intraarterial chemotherapy is a relatively new treatment method with promising outcomes. The purpose of this literature review is to evaluate its role in the management of retinoblastoma.