A hypoxia-inducible factor 1α null splice variant lacking exon 10

Curcumin pretreatment protects against hypoxia/reoxgenation injury via improvement of mitochondrial function, destabilization of HIF-1α and activation of Epac1-Akt pathway in rat bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells

Bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) possess promising therapeutic effects and have been considered as a highly desirable agent for tissue injury treatment. However, little survived cells after transplanting due to severe relocated conditions (characterized by prolonged hypoxia and oxidative stress) lead to hampered benefits of BMSCs-based cell therapy. Curcumin, a natural dietary product, has attracted increasing attention owing to its profound pharmacologic properties. Here, we report the protective effects of curcumin pretreatment in BMSCs against hypoxia and reoxygenation (H/R) triggered injury, which mimick ischemia/reperfusion in vivo. We found that curcumin pretreatment remarkably inhibited H/R-induced cell viability loss, cell nuclei condensation, LDH leakage, as well as caspase-3 activity increase in BMSCs. Furthermore, curcumin pretreatment prevented H/R-induced mitochondrial dysfunction through expediting adenosine triphosphate production and suppressing reactive oxygen species accumulation and mitochondrial membrane potential decline. In addition, curcumin pretreatment notably induced HIF-1α destabilization, Epac1 and Akt activation, and Erk1/2 and p38 deactivation. However, Epac1 inhibitor ESI-09 obviously restrained the increase of p-Akt induced by curcumin, but not p-Erk1/2 or p-p38, and abrogated the protective effect of curcumin on BMSCs' survival and arrested cell cycle in G0/G1 phase. Taken together, these results demonstrated that curcumin pretreatment conferred BMSCs the ability to survive from H/R injury, which might attribute to its protection on mitochondrial function, destabilization of HIF-1α and activation of Epac1-Akt signaling pathway. Thus, this study provides more pharmacologic aspects of curcumin, and suggests that pre-conditioning of BMSCs with curcumin could serve as an attractive approach for facilitating cell therapy in tissue repair treatment.

Combined effects of FH (E404D) and ACOX2 (R409H) cause metabolic defects in primary cardiac malignant tumor

Primary malignant cardiac tumors (PMCTs) are extremely rare. The apparent immunity of the heart to invasive cancer has attracted considerable interest given the continuously rising incidence of cancer in other organs. This study aims to determine the conditions that could result in cardiac carcinoma and expand our understanding of cardiac tumor occurrence. We report two cases: a male (Patient-1) with primary cardiac malignant fibrous histiocytoma (MFH) and a female (Patient-2) with primary cardiac angiosarcoma. Merged genome-wide analyses of aCGH, Exome sequencing, and RNA-sequencing were performed on Patient-1 using peripheral blood, carcinoma tissue, and samples of adjacent normal tissue. Only whole-transcriptome analysis was carried out on Patient-2, due to insufficient quantities of sample from Patient-2. We identified a novel inherited loss of functional mutation of FH (Glu404Asp), a recurrent somatic hotspot mutation of PIK3CA (His1047Arg) and a somatic duplication in copy number of HIF1A. FH (E404D) severely compromised FH enzyme activity and lead to decreased protein expression in cardiac tumor tissues. We previously reported a functional mutation ACOX2 (R409H), which is potentially associated with decreased β-oxidation of fatty acids in the cardiac tumor tissue. Results of transcriptome analyses on two patients further revealed that the RNA expression of genes in the TCA cycle and beta-oxidation were uniformly downregulated. In this study, combined effects of FH (E404D) and ACOX2 (R409H) on metabolic switch from fatty acids to glucose were remarkably distinct, which might be an essential precondition to trigger the occurrence of PMCTs and mimic the Warburg effect, a hallmark of cancer metabolism.