Circulating MicroRNA Profiles Differ between Hyperglycemia and Euglycemia in Coronary Heart Disease Patients

Glucose Oxidase-Integrated Metal-Polyphenolic Network as a Microenvironment-Activated Cascade Nanozyme for Hyperglycemic Wound Disinfection

The high systemic blood glucose concentration of hyperglycemic wound microenvironment (WME) severely impedes the disinfection and healing of infected skin wounds. Herein, a WME-activated smart natural product, integrated GOx-GA-Fe nanozyme (GGFzyme), is engineered, which combines a nanozyme and natural enzyme to promote reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation in situ for hyperglycemic wound disinfection. GGFzyme can consume a high concentration of glucose in hyperglycemia wounds and generate H₂O₂. The conversion of glucose into gluconic acid not avails starvation treatment but reduces the pH of WME to elevate the catalytic activities of both the nanozyme (GA-Fe) and natural enzyme (GOx). And H₂O₂ is then high efficiently catalyzed into ^•OH and O₂^•- in situ to combat pathogenic bacteria and promote wound disinfection. The high catalytic antibacterial capacity and superior biosafety, combined with beneficial WME modulation, demonstrate that GGFzyme is a promising therapeutic agent for hyperglycemic wounds.

Elevated serum miR-3129-5p contributes to the progression of coronary heart disease via targeting mTOR

The current study aims to explore the miRNA changes that occur in the serum of patients with coronary heart disease (CHD) and healthy controls using a microarray technique, thereby exploring the potential biomarkers in the diagnosis of CHD and the underlying mechanism. Clinical data were reviewed, and venous blood samples were collected from 66 cases of CHD and 58 cases of healthy controls. MicroRNA-wide expression profiling identified 16 miRNAs that were aberrantly decreased by ~2-fold in the serum of patients with CHD compared to that of healthy controls. RT-PCR analysis indicated that the expression of miR-3129-5p was increased the most in patients with CHD compared with that of controls. Moreover, serum miR-3129-5p was found to be highest in the severe stenosis group, followed by the moderate stenosis group and mild stenosis group. ROC analysis showed that serum miR-3129-5p could differentiate patients with CHD from controls. Further study showed that mTOR was a target gene of miR-3129-5p. Western blot assays demonstrated that miR-3129-5p significantly suppressed the phosphorylation of S6 but increased LC3II/LC3I and Beclin1 levels. Consistently, GFP-LC3 and TEM assays indicated that miR-3129 increased autophagy puncta in H9C2 cells. More importantly, silencing mTOR significantly decreased the expression of p-S6 but increased LC3II/LC3I and Beclin expression even in H9C2 cells transfected with miR-3129-5p inhibitor, indicating that miR-3129-5p-induced cell autophagy was mediated via mTOR in H9C2 cells. In summary, elevated serum miR-3129-5p contributes to CHD by targeting mTOR signaling and may be a therapeutic target in the treatment of CHD.

Hyperglycemia-related FAS gene and hsa-let-7b-5p as markers of poor outcomes for ischaemic stroke

BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE

Hyperglycemia in acute stroke leads to poor neurological outcomes. The role of microRNA (miRNA) in hyperglycemia-associated genes can provide new avenues for stroke prognostic applications. We aimed to identify novel genes and their regulated miRNAs that are associated with hyperglycemia-induced unfavorable stroke outcomes and further validated in the plasma exosome. Moreover, we intended to evaluate the prognostic ability of miRNA-messenger RNA (mRNA) biomarkers in addition to using traditional risk factors.

METHODS

After the integration analysis of small RNA sequencing and mRNA polymerase chain reaction array, two mRNAs and six miRNAs were selected for validation in middle cerebral artery occlusion animal models and ischaemic stroke patients. Receiver operator characteristic analysis was used to determine the performance of mRNA and miRNA expression.

RESULTS

The increased Fas expression was associated with hyperglycemia after acute stroke onset in animal and human studies. In addition, Fas gene level was significantly higher in patients with an unfavorable outcome when compared with patients with a favorable outcome. The expression of Fas and miRNA hsa-let-7b-5p in addition to traditional risk factors could increase the discrimination and predictive ability for poor prognosis. The higher exosomal Fas was further observed among patients with an unfavorable outcome, suggesting Fas signal transporting through exosome in the circulation system.

CONCLUSIONS

Combined analyses of Fas and has-let-7b-5p expression in addition to traditional risk factors are favorable prognostic biomarkers for predicting poor neurological outcomes at 3 months after stroke onset in ischaemic stroke patients. Additional studies are required to address the precise role of the apoptosis pathway in unfavorable hyperglycemia-induced stroke outcomes.

C/VDdb: A multi-omics expression profiling database for a knowledge-driven approach in cardiovascular disease (CVD)

The cardiovascular disease (C/VD) database is an integrated and clustered information resource that covers multi-omic studies (microRNA, genomics, proteomics and metabolomics) of cardiovascular-related traits with special emphasis on coronary artery disease (CAD). This resource was built by mining existing literature and public databases and thereafter manual biocuration was performed. To enable integration of omic data from distinct platforms and species, a specific ontology was applied to tie together and harmonise multi-level omic studies based on gene and protein clusters (CluSO) and mapping of orthologous genes (OMAP) across species. CAD continues to be a leading cause of death in the population worldwide, and it is generally thought to be an age-related disease. However, CAD incidence rates are now known to be highly influenced by environmental factors and interactions, in addition to genetic determinants. With the complexity of CAD aetiology, there is a difficulty in research studies to elucidate general elements compared to other cardiovascular diseases. Data from 92 studies, covering 13945 molecular entries (4353 unique molecules) is described, including data descriptors for experimental setup, study design, discovery-validation sample size and associated fold-changes of the differentially expressed molecular features (p-value<0.05). A dedicated interactive web interface, equipped with a multi-parametric search engine, data export and indexing menus are provided for a user-accessible browsing experience. The main aim of this work was the development of a data repository linking clinical information and molecular differential expression in several CVD-related traits from multi-omics studies (genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics). As an example case of how to query and identify data sets within the database framework and concomitantly demonstrate the database utility, we queried CAD-associated studies and performed a systems-level integrative analysis. URL: www.padb.org/cvd