TIGAR's promiscuity

Immune landscape of hepatocellular carcinoma: The central role of TP53-inducible glycolysis and apoptosis regulator

Objective

This study aims to address the substantive issue of lacking reliable prognostic biomarkers in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) by investigating the relationship between TP53-inducible glycolysis and apoptosis regulator (TIGAR) and HCC prognosis using The Cancer Genome Atlas database.

Methods

(1) Integrated statistical analyses, including logistic regression, Wilcoxon signed-rank test, and Kruskal-Wallis test, were conducted to explore the association between TIGAR expression and clinical-pathological features of HCC. (2) The Kaplan-Meier method combined with univariate and multivariate Cox regression models underscored TIGAR as a prognostic factor in HCC. (3) Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) revealed key pathways associated with TIGAR, while single-sample gene set enrichment analysis (ssGSEA) determined its relevance to cancer immune infiltration.

Results

(1) Elevated TIGAR expression was significantly correlated with decreased survival outcomes in HCC patients. (2) GSEA highlighted the significant link between TIGAR and humoral immunity. (3) ssGSEA revealed a positive correlation between TIGAR expression and infiltration of Th1 and Th2 cells and a negative correlation with Th17 cell infiltration.

Conclusion

TIGAR, as a potential prognostic biomarker for HCC, holds significant value in immune infiltration. Understanding the role of TIGAR could contribute to improved prognostic predictions and personalized treatment strategies for HCC patients.

High Glucose Activates Prolyl Hydroxylases and Disrupts HIF-α Signaling via the P53/TIGAR Pathway in Cardiomyocyte

The induction of hypoxia tolerance has emerged as a novel therapeutic strategy for the treatment of ischemic diseases. The disruption of hypoxic signaling by hyperglycemia has been shown to contribute to diabetic cardiomyopathy. In this study, we explored the potential molecular mechanisms by which high glucose (HG) impairs hypoxia-inducible factor-α (HIF-α) signaling in cardiomyocytes. The exposure of H9c2 cell lines to HG resulted in time- and concentration-dependent decreases in HIF-1α and HIF-2α expression together with an increase in prolyl hydroxylase-1,2 (PHD1 and PHD2) expression, the main regulators of HIF-α destabilization in the heart. The exposure of H9c2 cells to normal glucose (5.5 mM) and high glucose (15, 30, and 45 mM) led to dose-dependent increases in p53 and TIGAR and a decrease in SIRT3 expression. The pretreatment of H9c2 with p53 siRNA to knockdown p53 attenuated PHD1 and PHD2 expression, thus significantly enhancing HIF-1α and HIF-2α expression in H9c2 cells under HG conditions. Interestingly, pretreatment with p53 siRNA altered H9c2 cell metabolism by reducing oxygen consumption rate and increasing glycolysis. Similarly, pretreatment with TIGAR siRNA blunted HG-induced PHD1 and PHD2 expression. This was accompanied by an increase in HIF-1α and HIF-2α expression with a reduction in oxygen consumption rate in H9c2 cells. Furthermore, pretreatment with adenovirus-SIRT3 (Ad-SIRT3) significantly reduced the HG-induced expression of p53 and PHDs and increased HIF-1α levels in H9c2 cells. Ad-SIRT3 treatment also regulated PHDs-HIF-1α levels in the hearts of diabetic db/db mice. Our study revealed a novel role of the HG-induced disruption of PHDs-HIF-α signaling via upregulating p53 and TIGAR expression. Therefore, the p53/TIGAR signaling pathway may be a novel target for diabetic cardiomyopathy.

TIGAR deficiency enhances skeletal muscle thermogenesis by increasing neuromuscular junction cholinergic signaling

Cholinergic and sympathetic counter-regulatory networks control numerous physiological functions, including learning/memory/cognition, stress responsiveness, blood pressure, heart rate, and energy balance. As neurons primarily utilize glucose as their primary metabolic energy source, we generated mice with increased glycolysis in cholinergic neurons by specific deletion of the fructose-2,6-phosphatase protein TIGAR. Steady-state and stable isotope flux analyses demonstrated increased rates of glycolysis, acetyl-CoA production, acetylcholine levels, and density of neuromuscular synaptic junction clusters with enhanced acetylcholine release. The increase in cholinergic signaling reduced blood pressure and heart rate with a remarkable resistance to cold-induced hypothermia. These data directly demonstrate that increased cholinergic signaling through the modulation of glycolysis has several metabolic benefits particularly to increase energy expenditure and heat production upon cold exposure.

Role of multifaceted regulators in cancer glucose metabolism and their clinical significance

Aberrant glucose metabolism, "aerobic glycolysis" or "Warburg effect", is a hallmark of human cancers. There is a cluster of "multifaceted regulators", which plays a pivotal role in the regulation of glucose metabolism. They can not only modulate the activities of specific enzymes, but also act as transcriptional activators to regulate the expression of metabolism related genes. Additionally, they can crosstalk with other key factors involved in glucose metabolism and work together to initiate multiple oncogenic processes. These "multifaceted regulators", especially p53, HIF-1, TIGAR and microRNA, will be focused in this review. And we will comprehensively illustrate their regulatory effects on cancer glucose metabolism, and further elaborate on their clinical significance. In-depth elucidation the role of "multifaceted regulators" in cancer glucose metabolism will provide us novel insights in cancer research field and offer promising therapeutic targets for anti-cancer therapies.

Metabolic reprogramming and dysregulated metabolism: cause, consequence and/or enabler of environmental carcinogenesis?

Environmental contributions to cancer development are widely accepted, but only a fraction of all pertinent exposures have probably been identified. Traditional toxicological approaches to the problem have largely focused on the effects of individual agents at singular endpoints. As such, they have incompletely addressed both the pro-carcinogenic contributions of environmentally relevant low-dose chemical mixtures and the fact that exposures can influence multiple cancer-associated endpoints over varying timescales. Of these endpoints, dysregulated metabolism is one of the most common and recognizable features of cancer, but its specific roles in exposure-associated cancer development remain poorly understood. Most studies have focused on discrete aspects of cancer metabolism and have incompletely considered both its dynamic integrated nature and the complex controlling influences of substrate availability, external trophic signals and environmental conditions. Emerging high throughput approaches to environmental risk assessment also do not directly address the metabolic causes or consequences of changes in gene expression. As such, there is a compelling need to establish common or complementary frameworks for further exploration that experimentally and conceptually consider the gestalt of cancer metabolism and its causal relationships to both carcinogenesis and the development of other cancer hallmarks. A literature review to identify environmentally relevant exposures unambiguously linked to both cancer development and dysregulated metabolism suggests major gaps in our understanding of exposure-associated carcinogenesis and metabolic reprogramming. Although limited evidence exists to support primary causal roles for metabolism in carcinogenesis, the universality of altered cancer metabolism underscores its fundamental biological importance, and multiple pleiomorphic, even dichotomous, roles for metabolism in promoting, antagonizing or otherwise enabling the development and selection of cancer are suggested.