Could the Women's Health Initiative Breathe New Life Into Breast Cancer Prevention?

An ultrasensitive label-free fluorescent aptamer sensor based on pH-gated release coumarin for detect HER2

Evaluation of human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2) molecular markers is a very suitable option for early diagnosis of breast cancer. Metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have large porosity and surface interactions such as π-π stacking, electrostatics, hydrogen bonding, and coordination. Here, we integrated the HER2 aptamer and fluorescent probe coumarin (COU) with zeolite imidazolic acid framework-8 (ZIF-8) to construct a label-free fluorescent aptamer sensor with pH-gated release of COU. In the presence of the target-HER2, the aptamer adsorbed on the surface of ZIF-8@COU specifically recognizes and falls off the HER2 protein, exposing a portion of the pore size of ZIF-8@COU while reducing the negative charge on the sensor surface, under alkaline hydrolysis conditions, a large number of COU fluorescent molecules can be produced and released in the detection system.The aptamer fluorescence sensor has good detection performance, sensitivity and low background interference, the detection linearity range of HER2 protein is 0.05-10 ng/mL, the detection limit is 0.0005 ng/mL, and it has good recovery rate for the serum detection of clinical breast cancer patients. Therefore, this sensor has high potential in detecting and monitoring HER2 levels for the care and clinical diagnosis of breast cancer patients.

DNAJB4 identified as a potential breast cancer marker: evidence from bioinformatics analysis and basic experiments

Background

Breast cancer (BC) is the leading cause of tumor-related death in women worldwide, but its pathogenesis is not clear. The efficient screening of new therapeutic targets for BC through bioinformatics and biological experimental techniques has become a hot topic in BC research.

Methods

The bioinformatics method was used to analyze the gene chips and obtain the hub genes, playing an important role in the development of BC. The biological processes (BP) involved in the hub genes were analyzed by Bingo, and the impact of each hub gene on disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) in BC patients was evaluated in the Kaplan-Meier Plotter database. The expression of DNAJB4, the hub gene with the greatest degree and having an effect on the prognosis of BC patients, was detected in BC cell lines and clinicopathological specimens. And DNAJB4 was selected for further biological experiments and clinical prognosis verification.

Results

Ten hub genes including DNAJB4, the greatest degree genes, were found by bioinformatics analysis of BC gene chips. DNAJB4 expressions in both BC cell lines and clinicopathological specimens were detected and the results showed that DNAJB4 was significantly down-regulated in BC cell lines and tissues. After interfering with the expression of DNAJB4, it was found that the invasion and migration ability of MDA-MB-231 cell line was significantly enhanced in vitro. The clinical survival data of BC patients showed that patients with high DNAJB4 expression had longer DFS.

Conclusions

DNAJB4 may be a tumor suppressor gene in BC as it could regulate invasion and migration of BC cells and its expression level is related to the prognosis of BC patients. Nevertheless, further researches are still necessary to verify its role in BC so as to provide evidences for clinical guidance regarding diagnosis and treatment.