The inducible amphisome isolates viral hemagglutinin and defends against influenza A virus infection

Tailored multivalent peptide targeting the B-subunit pentamer of cholera toxin inhibits its intestinal toxicity by inducing aberrant transport of the toxin in cells

Cholera toxin (Ctx) is a major virulence factor produced by Vibrio cholerae that can cause gastrointestinal diseases, including severe watery diarrhea and dehydration, in humans. Ctx binds to target cells through multivalent interactions between its B-subunit pentamer and the receptor ganglioside GM1 present on the cell surface. Here, we identified a series of tetravalent peptides that specifically bind to the receptor-binding region of the B-subunit pentamer using affinity-based screening of multivalent random-peptide libraries. These tetravalent peptides efficiently inhibited not only the cell-elongation phenotype but also the elevated cAMP levels, both of which are induced by Ctx treatment in CHO cells or a human colon carcinoma cell line (Caco-2 cells), respectively. Importantly, one of these peptides, NRR-tet, which was highly efficient in these two activities, markedly inhibited fluid accumulation in the mouse ileum caused by the direct injection of Ctx. In consistent, NRR-tet reduced the extensive Ctx-induced damage of the intestinal villi. After NRR-tet bound to Ctx, the complex was incorporated into the cultured epithelial cells and accumulated in the recycling endosome, affecting the retrograde transport of Ctx from the endosome to the Golgi, which is an essential process for Ctx to exert its toxicity in cells. Thus, NRR-tet may be a novel type of therapeutic agent against cholera, which induces the aberrant transport of Ctx in the intestinal epithelial cells, detoxifying the toxin.

Autophagy-Dependent Secretion: Crosstalk between Autophagy and Exosome Biogenesis

The cellular secretome is pivotal in mediating intercellular communication and coordinating responses to stressors. Exosomes, initially recognized for their role in waste disposal, have now emerged as key intercellular messengers with significant therapeutic and diagnostic potential. Similarly, autophagy has transcended its traditional role as a waste removal mechanism, emerging as a regulator of intracellular communication pathways and a contributor to a unique autophagy-dependent secretome. Secretory authophagy, initiated by various stress stimuli, prompts the selective release of proteins implicated in inflammation, including leaderless proteins that bypass the conventional endoplasmic reticulum-Golgi secretory pathway. This reflects the significant impact of stress-induced autophagy on cellular secretion profiles, including the modulation of exosome release. The convergence of exosome biogenesis and autophagy is exemplified by the formation of amphisomes, vesicles that integrate autophagic and endosomal pathways, indicating their synergistic interplay. Regulatory proteins common to both pathways, particularly mTORC1, emerge as potential therapeutic targets to alter cellular secretion profiles involved in various diseases. This review explores the dynamic interplay between autophagy and exosome formation, highlighting the potential to influence the secretome composition. While the modulation of exosome secretion and cytokine preconditioning is well-established in regenerative medicine, the strategic manipulation of autophagy is still underexplored, presenting a promising but uncharted therapeutic landscape.

Intraluminal vesicle trafficking is involved in the secretion of base excision repair protein APE1

The apurinic/apyrimidinic endodeoxyribonuclease 1 (APE1) is an essential enzyme of the base excision repair pathway of non-distorting DNA lesions. In response to genotoxic treatments, APE1 is highly secreted (sAPE1) in association with small-extracellular vesicles (EVs). Interestingly, its presence in the serum of patients with hepatocellular or non-small-cell-lung cancers may represent a prognostic biomarker. The mechanism driving APE1 to associate with EVs is unknown, but is of paramount importance in better understanding the biological roles of sAPE1. Because APE1 lacks an endoplasmic reticulum-targeting signal peptide, it can be secreted through an unconventional protein secretion endoplasmic reticulum-Golgi-independent pathway, which includes an endosome-based secretion of intraluminal vesicles, mediated by multivesicular bodies (MVBs). Using HeLa and A549 cell lines, we investigated the role of endosomal sorting complex required for transport protein pathways (either-dependent or -independent) in the constitutive or trichostatin A-induced secretion of sAPE1, by means of manumycin A and GW 4869 treatments. Through an in-depth biochemical analysis of late-endosomes (LEs) and early-endosomes (EEs), we observed that the distribution of APE1 on density gradient corresponded to that of LE-CD63, LE-Rab7, EE-EEA1 and EE-Rab 5. Interestingly, the secretion of sAPE1, induced by cisplatin genotoxic stress, involved an autophagy-based unconventional secretion requiring MVBs. The present study enlightens the central role played by MVBs in the secretion of sAPE1 under various stimuli, and offers new perspectives in understanding the biological relevance of sAPE1 in cancer cells.

A tailored tetravalent peptide displays dual functions to inhibit amyloid β production and aggregation

Inhibition of amyloid-β peptide (Aβ) accumulation in the brain is a promising approach for treatment of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Aβ is produced by β-secretase and γ-secretase in endosomes via sequential proteolysis of amyloid precursor protein (APP). Aβ and APP have a common feature to readily cluster to form multimers. Here, using multivalent peptide library screens, we identified a tetravalent peptide, LME-tet, which binds APP and Aβ via multivalent interactions. In cells, LME-tet-bound APP in the plasma membrane is transported to endosomes, blocking Aβ production through specific inhibition of β-cleavage, but not γ-cleavage. LME-tet further suppresses Aβ aggregation by blocking formation of the β-sheet conformation. Inhibitory effects are not observed with a monomeric peptide, emphasizing the significance of multivalent interactions for mediating these activities. Critically, LME-tet efficiently reduces Aβ levels in the brain of AD model mice, suggesting it may hold promise for treatment of AD.

Development of a novel tetravalent peptide that absorbs subtilase cytotoxin by targeting the receptor-binding B-subunit

Subtilase cytotoxin (SubAB) is a major virulence factor produced by eae-negative Shiga-toxigenic Escherichia coli (STEC) that can cause fatal systemic complications. SubAB binds to target cells through multivalent interactions between its B-subunit pentamer and receptor molecules such as glycoproteins with a terminal N-glycolylneuraminic acid (Neu5Gc). We screened randomized multivalent peptide libraries synthesized on a cellulose membrane and identified a series of tetravalent peptides that efficiently bind to the receptor-binding region of the SubAB B-subunit pentamer. These peptides competitively inhibited the binding of the B-subunit to a receptor-mimic molecule containing clustered Neu5Gc (Neu5Gc-polymer). We selected the peptide with the highest inhibitory efficacy, FFP-tet, and covalently bound it to beads to synthesize FFP-tet-beads, a highly clustered SubAB absorber that displayed potency to absorb SubAB cytotoxicity through direct binding to the toxin. The efficacy of FFP-tet-beads to absorb SubAB cytotoxicity in solution was similar to that of Neu5Gc-polymer, suggesting that FFP-tet-beads might be an effective therapeutic agent against complications arising from eae-negative STEC infection.

Antiviral Peptides as Anti-Influenza Agents

Influenza viruses represent a leading cause of high morbidity and mortality worldwide. Approaches for fighting flu are seasonal vaccines and some antiviral drugs. The development of the seasonal flu vaccine requires a great deal of effort, as careful studies are needed to select the strains to be included in each year's vaccine. Antiviral drugs available against Influenza virus infections have certain limitations due to the increased resistance rate and negative side effects. The highly mutative nature of these viruses leads to the emergence of new antigenic variants, against which the urgent development of new approaches for antiviral therapy is needed. Among these approaches, one of the emerging new fields of "peptide-based therapies" against Influenza viruses is being explored and looks promising. This review describes the recent findings on the antiviral activity, mechanism of action and therapeutic capability of antiviral peptides that bind HA, NA, PB1, and M2 as a means of countering Influenza virus infection.

LAMTOR1 degrades MHC-II via the endocytic in hepatocellular carcinoma

Tumor cell surface antigen recognition is a major hallmark of cancer therapy, and loss of major histocompatibility complex class I (MHC-I) is the most common mechanism that impairs tumor cell surface antigen processing and expression. In addition to this, MHC-II regulates antigen presentation in CD4+ T cell immune responses involved in tumor killing by CD8+ T cells, whereas the regulation of endocytosis regulating MHC-II antigen presentation has not been reported. Therefore, the regulation of the endocytosis pathway on the expression of MHC-II surface level and antitumor T cell response remains to be explored. In this experiment, we found that LAMTOR1 regulates the endocytic pathway through the GTPase domain of DNM2 and triggers the formation of autophagosomes. We performed flow cytometry and western blotting analyses, which revealed that the expression of MHC-II molecules on the surface of cells is influenced by LAMTOR1 through the endocytic pathway. We showed that the expression of MHC-II molecules, which recognize CD4+ T cells on the surface of cells, was regulated by LAMTOR1 through an endocytic pathway. By coculture experiments, we showed that CD8+/CD4+ T cells exhibit substantially higher levels of tumor cell apoptosis than those observed when hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) cells were cocultured with CD8+ T cells alone. This study revealed that LAMTOR1 decreases the expression levels of MHC-II on cell surfaces in order to reduce antigen expression, leading to a decrease in antitumor T cell responses.

Crosstalk between autophagy inhibitors and endosome-related secretory pathways: a challenge for autophagy-based treatment of solid cancers

Autophagy is best known for its role in organelle and protein turnover, cell quality control, and metabolism. The autophagic machinery has, however, also adapted to enable protein trafficking and unconventional secretory pathways so that organelles (such as autophagosomes and multivesicular bodies) delivering cargo to lysosomes for degradation can change their mission from fusion with lysosomes to fusion with the plasma membrane, followed by secretion of the cargo from the cell. Some factors with key signalling functions do not enter the conventional secretory pathway but can be secreted in an autophagy-mediated manner.Positive clinical results of some autophagy inhibitors are encouraging. Nevertheless, it is becoming clear that autophagy inhibition, even within the same cancer type, can affect cancer progression differently. Even next-generation inhibitors of autophagy can have significant non-specific effects, such as impacts on endosome-related secretory pathways and secretion of extracellular vesicles (EVs). Many studies suggest that cancer cells release higher amounts of EVs compared to non-malignant cells, which makes the effect of autophagy inhibitors on EVs secretion highly important and attractive for anticancer therapy. In this review article, we discuss how different inhibitors of autophagy may influence the secretion of EVs and summarize the non-specific effects of autophagy inhibitors with a focus on endosome-related secretory pathways. Modulation of autophagy significantly impacts not only the quantity of EVs but also their content, which can have a deep impact on the resulting pro-tumourigenic or anticancer effect of autophagy inhibitors used in the antineoplastic treatment of solid cancers.

Autophagy Is Required for Maturation of Surfactant-Containing Lamellar Bodies in the Lung and Swim Bladder

Autophagy is an intracellular degradation system, but its physiological functions in vertebrates are not yet fully understood. Here, we show that autophagy is required for inflation of air-filled organs: zebrafish swim bladder and mouse lung. In wild-type zebrafish swim bladder and mouse lung type II pulmonary epithelial cells, autophagosomes are formed and frequently fuse with lamellar bodies. The lamellar body is a lysosome-related organelle that stores a phospholipid-containing surfactant complex that lines the air-liquid interface and reduces surface tension. We find that autophagy is critical for maturation of the lamellar body. Accordingly, atg-deficient zebrafish fail to maintain their position in the water, and type-II-pneumocyte-specific Fip200-deficient mice show neonatal lethality with respiratory failure. Autophagy suppression does not affect synthesis of the surfactant phospholipid, suggesting that autophagy supplies lipids and membranes to lamellar bodies. These results demonstrate an evolutionarily conserved role of autophagy in lamellar body maturation.

IKKβ activation promotes amphisome formation and extracellular vesicle secretion in tumor cells

Intracellular organelle cross-talk is a new and important research area. Under stress conditions, the coordinated action of the autophagy and endosomal systems in tumor cells is essential for maintaining cellular homeostasis and survival. The activation of the IκB kinase (IKK) complex is also involved in the regulation of stress and homeostasis in tumor cells. Here, we try to explore the effects of constitutively active IKKβ subunits (CA-IKKβ) on autophagy and endosomal system interactions. We confirm that CA-IKKβ induces accumulation of autophagosomes and their fusion with MVBs to form amphisomes in cancer cells, and also drives the release of EVs containing autophagy components through an amphisome-dependent mechanism. We further demonstrate that CA-IKKβ inhibits the expression of RAB7, thereby weakening the lysosomal-dependent degradation pathway. CA-IKKβ also induces phosphorylation of SNAP23 at Ser95 instead of Ser110, which further promotes amphisome-plasma membrane fusion and sEV secretion. These results indicate that CA-IKKβ drives the formation and transport of amphisomes, thereby regulating tumor cell homeostasis, which may illuminate a special survival mechanism in tumor cells under stress.

Host-Virus Interaction: How Host Cells Defend against Influenza A Virus Infection

Influenza A viruses (IAVs) are highly contagious pathogens infecting human and numerous animals. The viruses cause millions of infection cases and thousands of deaths every year, thus making IAVs a continual threat to global health. Upon IAV infection, host innate immune system is triggered and activated to restrict virus replication and clear pathogens. Subsequently, host adaptive immunity is involved in specific virus clearance. On the other hand, to achieve a successful infection, IAVs also apply multiple strategies to avoid be detected and eliminated by the host immunity. In the current review, we present a general description on recent work regarding different host cells and molecules facilitating antiviral defenses against IAV infection and how IAVs antagonize host immune responses.