Annexin V-Directed Enzyme Prodrug Therapy Plus Docetaxel for the Targeted Treatment of Pancreatic Cancer

Increased ANXA5 expression in stomach adenocarcinoma infers a poor prognosis and high level of immune infiltration

BACKGROUND: The prognostic role of annexin A5 (ANXA5) in stomach adenocarcinoma (STAD) has not been studied, and its relationship with immune infiltration is still unclear. OBJECTIVE: This investigation aimed at exploring the role of ANXA5 in STAD using an integrated bioinformatics analysis. METHODS: The expression of ANXA5 in STAD and the correlations between the effect of ANXA5 and survival of STAD patients were investigated using database. The clusterProfiler package in R software was used to perform enrichment analysis on the top 100 co-expressed genes of ANXA5 from the COXPRESdb online database. Correlations between ANXA5 and immune cell infiltrates were analyzed using the TIMER database. RESULTS: In STAD, ANXA5 expression was significantly upregulated and increased ANXA5 expression was significantly correlated with poor overall survival (P< 0.05). In multivariate analysis, upregulated ANXA5 expression was an independent predictive factors of poor prognosis (P< 0.05). The co-expressed genes were involved in extracellular matrix (ECM)-related processes. In STAD, ANXA5 expression was significantly correlated with various infiltrating immune cells (P< 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Together with our findings, ANXA5 could serve as a potential biomarker to assess prognosis and immune infiltration level in STAD.

An Enzyme-Directed Imidazoquinoline for Cancer Immunotherapy

Herein we report the synthesis and activity of an enzyme-directed immunostimulant with immune cell activation mediated by β-galactosidase, either exogenously added, or on B16 melanoma cells. Covalent attachment of a β-galactopyranoside to an imidazoquinoline immunostimulant at a position critical for activity resulted in a pro-immunostimulant that could be selectively converted by β-galactosidase into an active immunostimulant. The pro-immunostimulant exhibited β-galactosidase-directed immune cell activation as measured by NF-κB transcription in RAW-Blue macrophages or cytokine production (TNF, IL-6, IL-12) in JAWSII monocytes. Conversion of the pro-immunostimulant into an active immunostimulant was also found to occur using β-galactosidase-enriched B16 melanoma cells. In co-culture experiments with either immune cell line, β-galactosidase-enriched B16 cells effected activation of bystander immune cells.