Biphasic Alteration of Butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) During Prostate Cancer Development

New insights into butyrylcholinesterase: Pharmaceutical applications, selective inhibitors and multitarget-directed ligands

Butyrylcholinesterase (BChE), also known as pseudocholinesterase and serum cholinesterase, is an isoenzyme of acetylcholinesterase (AChE). It mediates the degradation of acetylcholine, especially under pathological conditions. Proverbial pharmacological applications of BChE, its mutants and modulators consist of combating Alzheimer's disease (AD), influencing multiple sclerosis (MS), addressing cocaine addiction, detoxifying organophosphorus poisoning and reflecting the progression or prognosis of some diseases. Of interest, recent reports have shed light on the relationship between BChE and lipid metabolism. It has also been proved that BChE is going to increase abnormally as a compensator for AChE in the middle and late stages of AD, and BChE inhibitors can alleviate cognitive disorders and positively influence some pathological features in AD model animals, foreboding favorable prospects and potential applications. Herein, the selective BChE inhibitors and BChE-related multitarget-directed ligands published in the last three years were briefly summarized, along with the currently known pharmacological applications of BChE, aiming to grasp the latest research directions. Thereinto, some emerging strategies for designing BChE inhibitors are intriguing, and the modulators based on target combination of histone deacetylase and BChE against AD is unprecedented. Furthermore, the involvement of BChE in the hydrolysis of ghrelin, the inhibition of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) uptake, and the down-regulation of LDL receptor (LDLR) expression suggests its potential to influence lipid metabolism disorders. This compelling prospect likely stimulates further exploration in this promising research direction.

Rational design of a near-infrared fluorescent probe for monitoring butyrylcholinesterase activity and its application in development of inhibitors

Butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) is widely expressed in multiple tissues and has a vital role in several key human disorders, such as Alzheimer's disease and tumorigenesis. However, the role of BChE in human disorders has not been investigated. Thus, to quantitatively detect and visualize dynamical variations in BChE activity is essential for exploring the biological roles of BChE in the progression of a number of human disorders. Herein, based on the substrate characteristics of BChE, we customized and synthesized three near-infrared (NIR) fluorescent probe substrates with cyanine-skeleton, and finally selected a NIR fluorescence probe substrate named CYBA. The CYBA demonstrated a significant increase in fluorescence when interacting with BChE, but mainly avoided AChE. Upon the addition of BChE, CYBA could be specifically hydrolyzed to TBO, resulting in a significant NIR fluorescence signal enhancement at 710 nm. Systematic evaluation revealed that CYBA exhibited exceptional chemical stability in complex biosamples and possessed remarkable selectivity and sensitivity towards BChE. Moreover, CYBA was successfully applied for real-time imaging of endogenous BChE activity in two types of nerve-related living cells. Additionally, CYBA demonstrated exceptional stability in the detection of complex biological samples in plasma recovery studies (97.51%-104.01%). Furthermore, CYBA was used to construct a high-throughput screening (HTS) method for BChE inhibitors using human plasma as the enzyme source. We evaluated inhibitory effects of a series of natural products and four flavonoids were identified as potent inhibitors of BChE. Collectively, CYBA can serve as a practical tool to track the changes of BChE activity in complicated biological environments due to its excellent capabilities.

Optical imaging probes for selective detection of butyrylcholinesterase

Butyrylcholinesterase (BChE), a member of the human serine hydrolase family, is an essential enzyme for cholinergic neurotransmission as it catalyzes the hydrolysis of acetylcholine. It also plays central roles in apoptosis, lipid metabolism, and xenobiotic detoxification. On the other side, abnormal levels of BChE are directly associated with the formation of pathogenic states such as neurodegenerative diseases, psychiatric and cardiovascular disorders, liver damage, diabetes, and cancer. Thus, selective and sensitive detection of BChE level in living organisms is highly crucial and is of great importance to further understand the roles of BChE in both physiological and pathological processes. However, it is a very complicated task due to the potential interference of acetylcholinesterase (AChE), the other human cholinesterase, as these two enzymes share a very similar substrate scope. To this end, optical imaging probes have attracted immense attention in recent years as they have modular structures, which can be tuned precisely to satisfy high selectivity toward BChE, and at the same time they offer real time and nondestructive imaging opportunities with a high spatial and temporal resolution. Here, we summarize BChE selective imaging probes by discussing the critical milestones achieved during the development process of these molecular sensors over the years. We put a special emphasis on design principles and biological applications of highly promising new generation activity-based probes. We also give a comprehensive outlook for the future of BChE-responsive probes and highlight the ongoing challenges. This collection marks the first review article on BChE-responsive imaging agents.

Progressions of the correlation between lipid metabolism and immune infiltration characteristics in gastric cancer and identification of BCHE as a potential biomarker

Background

Globally, gastric cancer (GC) is a category of prevalent malignant tumors. Its high occurrence and fatality rates represent a severe threat to public health. According to recent research, lipid metabolism (LM) reprogramming impacts immune cells' ordinary function and is critical for the onset and development of cancer. Consequently, the article conducted a sophisticated bioinformatics analysis to explore the potential connection between LM and GC.

Methods

We first undertook a differential analysis of the TCGA queue to recognize lipid metabolism-related genes (LRGs) that are differentially expressed. Subsequently, we utilized the LASSO and Cox regression analyses to create a predictive signature and validated it with the GSE15459 cohort. Furthermore, we examined somatic mutations, immune checkpoints, tumor immune dysfunction and exclusion (TIDE), and drug sensitivity analyses to forecast the signature's immunotherapy responses.

Results

Kaplan-Meier (K-M) curves exhibited considerably longer OS and PFS (p<0.001) of the low-risk (LR) group. PCA analysis and ROC curves evaluated the model's predictive efficacy. Additionally, GSEA analysis demonstrated that a multitude of carcinogenic and matrix-related pathways were much in the high-risk (HR) group. We then developed a nomogram to enhance its clinical practicality, and we quantitatively analyzed tumor-infiltrating immune cells (TIICs) using the CIBERSORT and ssGSEA algorithms. The low-risk group has a lower likelihood of immune escape and more effective in chemotherapy and immunotherapy. Eventually, we selected BCHE as a potential biomarker for further research and validated its expression. Next, we conducted a series of cell experiments (including CCK-8 assay, Colony formation assay, wound healing assay and Transwell assays) to prove the impact of BCHE on gastric cancer biological behavior.

Discussion

Our research illustrated the possible consequences of lipid metabolism in GC, and we identified BCHE as a potential therapeutic target for GC. The LRG-based signature could independently forecast the outcome of GC patients and guide personalized therapy.

Real-time visualization of butyrylcholinesterase activity using a highly selective and sensitive chemiluminescent probe

Butyrylcholinesterase (BChE), one of the critical human cholinesterases, plays crucial roles in numerous physiological and pathological processes. Accordingly, it is a striking and at the same time challenging target for bioimaging studies. Herein, we developed the first ever example of a 1,2-dixoetane-based chemiluminescent probe (BCC) for monitoring BChE activity in native biological contexts such as living cells and animals. BCC was initially shown to exhibit a highly selective and sensitive turn-on response in its luminescence signal upon reacting with BChE in aqueous solutions. Later, BCC was utilized to image endogenous BChE activity in normal and cancer cell lines. It was also shown through inhibition experiments that BChE can detect fluctuations of BChE levels successfully. In vivo imaging ability of BCC was demonstrated in healthy and tumor-bearing mice models. BCC enabled us to visualize the BChE activity in different regions of the body. Furthermore, it was successfully employed to monitor tumors derived from neuroblastoma cells with a very high signal to noise ratio. Thus, BCC appears as a highly promising chemiluminescent probe, which can be used to further understand the contribution of BChE to regular cellular processes and the formation of diseased states.

BCHE as a Prognostic Biomarker in Endometrial Cancer and Its Correlation with Immunity

Background

In developed countries, the most common gynecologic malignancy is endometrial carcinoma (EC), making the identification of EC biomarkers extremely essential. As a natural enzyme, butyrylcholinesterase (BCHE) is found in hepatocytes and plasma. There is a strong correlation between BCHE gene mutations and cancers and other diseases. The aim of this study was to analyze the role of BCHE in patients with EC.

Methods

A variety of analyses were conducted on The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) data, including differential expression analysis, enrichment analysis, immunity, clinicopathology, and survival analysis. The Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database was used to validate outcomes. Using R tools, Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA) and Gene Ontology (GO) analyses revealed the potential mechanisms of BCHE in EC. Sangerbox tools were used to delve into the relations between BCHE expression and tumor microenvironment, including microsatellite instability (MSI), tumor neoantigen count (TNC), and tumor mutation burden (TMB). BCHE's genetic alteration analysis was conducted by cBioPortal. In addition, the Human Protein Atlas (HPA) was used to validate the outcomes by immunohistochemistry, and an analysis of the protein-protein interaction network (PPI) was performed with the help of the STRING database.

Results

Based on our results, BCHE was a significant independent prognostic factor for patients with EC. The prognosis with EC was affected by age, stage, grade, histological type, and BCHE. GSEA showed that BCHE was closely related to pathways regulating immune response, including transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β) signaling pathways and cancer immunotherapy through PD1 blockade pathways. The immune analysis revealed that CD4+ regulatory T cells (Tregs) were negatively correlated with BCHE expression and the immune checkpoint molecules CD28, ADORA2A, BTNL2, and TNFRSF18 were all significantly related to BCHE. BCHE expression was also associated with TMB by genetic alteration analysis.

Conclusions

Identifying BCHE as a biomarker for EC might help predict its prognosis and could have important implications for immunotherapy.

An advanced network pharmacology study to explore the novel molecular mechanism of Compound Kushen Injection for treating hepatocellular carcinoma by bioinformatics and experimental verification

Background

Compound Kushen Injection (CKI) is a Chinese patent drug that exerts curative effects in the clinical treatment of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). This study aimed to explore the targets and potential pharmacological mechanisms of CKI in the treatment of HCC.

Methods

In this study, network pharmacology was used in combination with molecular biology experiments to predict and verify the molecular mechanism of CKI in the treatment of HCC. The constituents of CKI were identified by UHPLC-MS/MS and literature search. The targets corresponding to these compounds and the targets related to HCC were collected based on public databases. To screen out the potential hub targets of CKI in the treatment of HCC, a compound-HCC target network was constructed. The underlying pharmacological mechanism was explored through the subsequent enrichment analysis. Interactive Gene Expression Profiling Analysis and Kaplan-Meier plotter were used to examine the expression and prognostic value of hub genes. Furthermore, the effects of CKI on HCC were verified through molecular docking simulations and cell experiments in vitro.

Results

Network analysis revealed that BCHE, SRD5A2, EPHX2, ADH1C, ADH1A and CDK1 were the key targets of CKI in the treatment of HCC. Among them, only CDK1 was highly expressed in HCC tissues, while the other 5 targets were lowly expressed. Furthermore, the six hub genes were all closely related to the prognosis of HCC patients in survival analysis. Molecular docking revealed that there was an efficient binding potential between the constituents of CKI and BCHE. Experiments in vitro proved that CKI inhibited the proliferation of HepG2 cells and up-regulated SRD5A2 and ADH1A, while down-regulated CDK1 and EPHX2.

Conclusions

This study revealed and verified the targets of CKI on HCC based on network pharmacology and experiments and provided a scientific reference for further mechanism research.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12906-022-03530-3.

Synthesis and Initial Characterization of a Selective, Pseudo-irreversible Inhibitor of Human Butyrylcholinesterase as PET Tracer

The enzyme butyrylcholinesterase (BChE) represents a promising target for imaging probes to potentially enable early diagnosis of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer's disease (AD) and to monitor disease progression in some forms of cancer. In this study, we present the design, facile synthesis, in vitro and preliminary ex vivo and in vivo evaluation of a morpholine-based, selective inhibitor of human BChE as a positron emission tomography (PET) tracer with a pseudo-irreversible binding mode. We demonstrate a novel protecting group strategy for 18 F radiolabeling of carbamate precursors and show that the inhibitory potency as well as kinetic properties of our unlabeled reference compound were retained in comparison to the parent compound. In particular, the prolonged duration of enzyme inhibition of such a morpholinocarbamate motivated us to design a PET tracer, possibly enabling a precise mapping of BChE distribution.

LIMK1 promotes peritoneal metastasis of gastric cancer and is a therapeutic target

Peritoneal metastasis is a common form of metastasis among advanced gastric cancer patients. In this study, we reported the identification of LIM domain kinase 1 (LIMK1) as a promoter of gastric cancer peritoneal metastasis, and its potential to be a therapeutic target of dabrafenib (DAB). Using transcriptomic sequencing of paired gastric cancer peritoneal metastasis, primary tumors, and normal gastric tissues, we first unveiled that LIMK1 is selectively up-regulated in metastatic tumors. Increased LIMK1 in gastric cancer peritoneal metastasis was validated by immunohistochemistry analysis of an independent patient cohort. In vitro functional studies demonstrated that LIMK1 knockout or knockdown significantly inhibited cell migration and invasion of gastric cancer cells. LIMK1 knockout also abrogated peritoneal and liver metastases of gastric cancer cells in nude mice in vivo. Dabrafenib, a small molecule targeting LIMK1, was found to decrease cell migration and invasion of gastric cancer cells in vitro and abolish peritoneal and liver metastasis formation in vivo. Mechanistically, either LIMK1 knockout or Dabrafenib inhibited LIMK1 expression and phosphorylation of its downstream target cofilin. Taken together, our results demonstrated that LIMK1 functions as a metastasis promoter in gastric cancer by inhibiting LIMK1-p-cofilin and that Dabrafenib has the potential to serve as a novel treatment for gastric cancer peritoneal metastasis.

Effective Prediction of Prostate Cancer Recurrence through the IQGAP1 Network

IQGAP1 expression was analyzed in: (1) primary prostate cancer, (2) xenografts produced from LNCaP, DU145, and PC3 cells, 3) tumor of PTEN-/- and TRAMP mice, and (3) castration resistant PC (CRPC) produced by LNCaP xenografts and PTEN-/- mice. IQGAP1 downregulations occurred in CRPC and advanced PCs. The downregulations were associated with rapid PC recurrence in the TCGA PanCancer (n = 492, p = 0.01) and MSKCC (n = 140, p = 4 × 10-6) cohorts. Differentially expressed genes (n = 598) relative to IQGAP1 downregulation were identified with enrichment in chemotaxis, cytokine signaling, and others along with reductions in immune responses. A novel 27-gene signature (Sig27gene) was constructed from these DEGs through random division of the TCGA cohort into a Training and Testing population. The panel was validated using an independent MSKCC cohort. Sig27gene robustly predicts PC recurrence at (hazard ratio) HR 2.72 and p < 2 × 10-16 in two independent PC cohorts. The prediction remains significant after adjusting for multiple clinical features. The novel and robust nature of Sig27gene underlie its great translational potential as a prognostic biomarker to predict PC relapse risk in patients with primary PC.

Identification of molecular markers associated with the progression and prognosis of endometrial cancer: a bioinformatic study

Background

Endometrial cancer (EC) is one kind of women cancers. Bioinformatic technology could screen out relative genes which made targeted therapy becoming conventionalized.

Methods

GSE17025 were downloaded from GEO. The genomic data and clinical data were obtained from TCGA. R software and bioconductor packages were used to identify the DEGs. Clusterprofiler was used for functional analysis. STRING was used to assess PPI information and plug-in MCODE to screen hub modules in Cytoscape. The selected genes were coped with functional analysis. CMap could find EC-related drugs that might have potential effect. Univariate and multivariate Cox proportional hazards regression analyses were performed to predict the risk of each patient. Kaplan–Meier curve analysis could compare the survival time. ROC curve analysis was performed to predict value of the genes. Mutation and survival analysis in TCGA database and UALCAN validation were completed. Immunohistochemistry staining from Human Protein Atlas database. GSEA, ROC curve analysis, Oncomine and qRT-PCR were also performed.

Results

Functional analysis showed that the upregulated DEGs were strikingly enriched in chemokine activity, and the down-regulated DEGs in glycosaminoglycan binding. PPI network suggested that NCAPG was the most relevant protein. CMap identified 10 small molecules as possible drugs to treat EC. Cox analysis showed that BCHE, MAL and ASPM were correlated with EC prognosis. TCGA dataset analysis showed significantly mutated BHCE positively related to EC prognosis. MAL and ASPM were further validated in UALCAN. All the results demonstrated that the two genes might promote EC progression. The profile of ASPM was confirmed by the results from immunohistochemistry. ROC curve demonstrated that the mRNA levels of two genes exhibited difference between normal and tumor tissues, indicating their diagnostic efficiency. qRT-PCR results supported the above results. Oncomine results showed that DNA copy number variation of MAL was significantly higher in different EC subtypes than in healthy tissues. GSEA suggested that the two genes played crucial roles in cell cycle.

Conclusion

BCHE, MAL and ASPM are tumor-related genes and can be used as potential biomarkers in EC treatment.

Assessment of biochemical recurrence of prostate cancer (Review)

The assessment of the risk of biochemical recurrence (BCR) is critical in the management of males with prostate cancer (PC). Over the past decades, a comprehensive effort has been focusing on improving risk stratification; a variety of models have been constructed using PC-associated pathological features and molecular alterations occurring at the genome, protein and RNA level. Alterations in RNA expression (lncRNA, miRNA and mRNA) constitute the largest proportion of the biomarkers of BCR. In this article, we systemically review RNA-based BCR biomarkers reported in PubMed according to the PRISMA guidelines. Individual miRNAs, mRNAs, lncRNAs and multi-gene panels, including the commercially available signatures, Oncotype DX and Prolaris, will be discussed; details related to cohort size, hazard ratio and 95% confidence intervals will be provided. Mechanistically, these individual biomarkers affect multiple pathways critical to tumorigenesis and progression, including epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT), phosphatase and tensin homolog (PTEN), Wnt, growth factor receptor, cell proliferation, immune checkpoints and others. This variety in the mechanisms involved not only validates their associations with BCR, but also highlights the need for the coverage of multiple pathways in order to effectively stratify the risk of BCR. Updates of novel biomarkers and their mechanistic insights are considered, which suggests new avenues to pursue in the prediction of BCR. Additionally, the management of patients with BCR and the potential utility of the stratification of the risk of BCR in salvage treatment decision making for these patients are briefly covered. Limitations will also be discussed.