Caspase-3 knockout attenuates radiation-induced tumor repopulation via impairing the ATM/p53/Cox-2/PGE2 pathway in non-small cell lung cancer

Identifying the Multitarget Pharmacological Mechanism of Action of Genistein on Lung Cancer by Integrating Network Pharmacology and Molecular Dynamic Simulation

Food supplements have become beneficial as adjuvant therapies for many chronic disorders, including cancer. Genistein, a natural isoflavone enriched in soybeans, has gained potential interest as an anticancer agent for various cancers, primarily by modulating apoptosis, the cell cycle, and angiogenesis and inhibiting metastasis. However, in lung cancer, the exact impact and mechanism of action of genistein still require clarification. To provide more insight into the mechanism of action of genistein, network pharmacology was employed to identify the key targets and their roles in lung cancer pathogenesis. Based on the degree score, the hub genes AKT1, CASP3, EGFR, STAT3, ESR1, SRC, PTGS2, MMP9, PRAG, and AR were significantly correlated with genistein treatment. AKT1, EGFR, and STAT3 were enriched in the non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) pathway according to Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes analysis, indicating a significant connection to lung cancer development. Moreover, the binding affinity of genistein to NSCLC target proteins was further verified by molecular docking and molecular dynamics simulations. Genistein exhibited potential binding to AKT1, which is involved in apoptosis, cell migration, and metastasis, thus holding promise for modulating AKT1 function. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the mechanism of action of genistein and its therapeutic potential for the treatment of NSCLC.

Lung cancer progression alters lung and gut microbiomes and lipid metabolism

Despite advances in medical technology, lung cancer still has one of the highest mortality rates among all malignancies. Therefore, efforts must be made to understand the precise mechanisms underlying lung cancer development. In this study, we conducted lung and gut microbiome analyses and a comprehensive lipid metabolome analysis of host tissues to assess their correlation. Alternations in the lung microbiome due to lung cancer, such as a significantly decreased abundance of Firmicutes and Deferribacterota, were observed compared to a mock group. However, mice with lung cancer had significantly lower relative abundances of Actinobacteria and Proteobacteria and higher relative abundances of Cyanobacteria and Patescibacteria in the gut microbiome. The activations of retinol, fatty acid metabolism, and linoleic acid metabolism metabolic pathways in the lung and gut microbiomes was inversely correlated. Additionally, changes occurred in lipid metabolites not only in the lungs but also in the blood, small intestine, and colon. Compared to the mock group, mice with lung cancer showed that the levels of adrenic, palmitic, stearic, and oleic (a ω-9 polyunsaturated fatty acid) acids increased in the lungs. Conversely, these metabolites consistently decreased in the blood (serum) and colon. Leukotriene B4 and prostaglandin E2 exacerbate lung cancer, and were upregulated in the lungs of the mice with lung cancer. However, isohumulone, a peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma activator, and resolvin (an ω-3 polyunsaturated fatty acid) both have anti-cancer effects, and were upregulated in the small intestine and colon. Our multi-omics data revealed that shifts in the microbiome and metabolome occur during the development of lung cancer and are of possible clinical importance. These results reveal one of the gut-lung axis mechanisms related to lung cancer and provide insights into potential new targets for lung cancer treatment and prophylaxis.

Recent advances in caspase-3, breast cancer, and traditional Chinese medicine: a review

Caspases (cysteinyl aspartate-specific proteinases) are a group of structurally similar proteases in the cytoplasm that can be involved in cell differentiation, programmed death, proliferation, and inflammatory generation. Experts have found that caspase-3 can serve as a terminal splicing enzyme in apoptosis and participate in the mechanism by which cytotoxic drugs kill cancer cells. Breast cancer (BC) has become the most common cancer among women worldwide, posing a severe threat to their lives. Finding new therapeutic targets for BC is the primary task of contemporary physicians. Numerous studies have revealed the close association between caspase-3 expression and BC. Caspase-3 is essential in BC's occurrence, invasion, and metastasis. In addition, Caspase-3 exerts anticancer effects by regulating cell death mechanisms. Traditional Chinese medicine acting through caspase-3 expression is increasingly used in clinical treatment. This review summarizes the biological mechanism of caspase-3 and research progress on BC. It introduces a variety of traditional Chinese medicine related to caspase-3 to provide new ideas for the clinical treatment of BC.

TP53 and the Ultimate Biological Optimization Steps of Curative Radiation Oncology

The new biological interaction cross-section-based repairable-homologically repairable (RHR) damage formulation for radiation-induced cellular inactivation, repair, misrepair, and apoptosis was applied to optimize radiation therapy. This new formulation implies renewed thinking about biologically optimized radiation therapy, suggesting that most TP53 intact normal tissues are low-dose hypersensitive (LDHS) and low-dose apoptotic (LDA). This generates a fractionation window in LDHS normal tissues, indicating that the maximum dose to organs at risk should be ≤2.3 Gy/Fr, preferably of low LET. This calls for biologically optimized treatments using a few high tumor dose-intensity-modulated light ion beams, thereby avoiding secondary cancer risks and generating a real tumor cure without a caspase-3-induced accelerated tumor cell repopulation. Light ions with the lowest possible LET in normal tissues and high LET only in the tumor imply the use of the lightest ions, from lithium to boron. The high microscopic heterogeneity in the tumor will cause local microscopic cold spots; thus, in the last week of curative ion therapy, when there are few remaining viable tumor clonogens randomly spread in the target volume, the patient should preferably receive the last 10 GyE via low LET, ensuring perfect tumor coverage, a high cure probability, and a reduced risk for adverse normal tissue reactions. Interestingly, such an approach would also ensure a steeper rise in tumor cure probability and a higher complication-free cure, as the few remaining clonogens are often fairly well oxygenated, eliminating a shallower tumor response due to inherent ion beam heterogeneity. With the improved fractionation proposal, these approaches may improve the complication-free cure probability by about 10-25% or even more.

Recent Developments and Challenges in Molecular-Targeted Therapy of Non-Small-Cell Lung Cancer

Treatment of lung cancer with conventional therapies, which include radiation, surgery, and chemotherapy results in multiple undesirable adverse or side effects. The major clinical challenge in developing new drug therapies for lung cancer is resistance, which involves mutations and disturbance in various signaling pathways. Molecular abnormalities related to epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), v-Raf murine sarcoma viral oncogene homolog B1 (B-RAF) Kirsten rat sarcoma virus (KRAS) mutations, translocation of the anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) gene, mesenchymal-epithelial transition factor (MET) amplification have been studied to overcome the resistance and to develop new therapies for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). But, inevitable development of resistance presents limits the clinical benefits of various new drugs. Here, we review current progress in the development of molecularly targeted therapies, concerning six clinical biomarkers: EGFR, ALK, MET, ROS-1, KRAS, and B-RAF for NSCLC treatment.

Systems biology network reveals the correlation between COX-2 expression and Ch 7q copy number alterations in Ch 11q-deleted pediatric neuroblastoma tumors

Tumor-associated inflammation and chromosomal aberrations can play crucial roles in cancer development and progression. In neuroblastoma (NB), the enzyme cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) is associated with copy number alterations on the long arm of chromosome 11 (Ch 11q), defining an aggressive disease subset. This retrospective study included formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tumor samples collected from nine patients during diagnosis at the pediatric Pequeno Principe Hospital, Curitiba, PR, Brazil, and post-chemotherapy (CT). COX-2 expression was evaluated using immunohistochemistry and correlated with the genome profile of paired pre- and post-CT samples, determined by array comparative genomic hybridization. A systems biology approach elucidated the PTGS2 network interaction. The results showed positive correlations between pre-CT Ch 7q gain and COX-2 expression (ρ = 0.825; p-value = 0.006) and negative correlations between Ch 7q gain and Ch 11q deletion (ρ = −0.919; p-value = 0.0005). Three samples showed Ch 11q deletion and Ch 7q gain. Network analysis identified a direct connection between CAV-1 (Ch 7q) and COX-2 in NB tumors and highlighted the connection between amplified genes in Ch 7q and deleted ones in 11q. The identification of hub-bottleneck-switch genes provides new biological insights into this connection between NB, tumorigenesis, and inflammation.

Novel ATM Gene c.5644 C > T (p.Arg1882*) Variant Detected in a Patient with Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma and Two Primary Non-Small Cell Lung Adenocarcinomas: A Case Report

Ataxia-telangiectasia is an autosomal recessive disorder that usually manifests in childhood due to mutations in the Ataxia-Telangiectasia Mutated (ATM) gene. It is believed that there is an association between this gene mutation/polymorphism and cancer risk, including breast, lung, and pancreatic cancers. We report a rare case of a 69-year-old woman who developed three different primary cancers, including non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) in both lungs and pancreatic adenocarcinoma, and was later found to have a rarely reported variant mutation in the ATM gene, namely Exon 39, c.5644 C > T. We hypothesize that the ATM gene, c.5644 C > T mutation could be a plausible contributor in the pathogenesis of these three cancers. This hypothesis has yet to be validated by larger studies that focus on a mechanistic approach involving DNA repair genes such as the ATM. More importantly, this paves the way to developing new patient-specific targeted therapies and inaugurating precision medicine as a cornerstone in cancer therapeutics.

Role of p53 methylation in manganese-induced cyclooxygenase-2 expression in BV2 microglial cells

Manganese (Mn) is an essential cofactor for many enzymes and plays an important role in normal growth and development. However, excess exposure to manganese (Mn) may be an important environmental factor leading to neurodegeneration. The overexpression of microglial cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) plays a key role in neuroinflammation in neurodegenerative diseases. The existing data suggest that Mn can induce neuroinflammation by up-regulating COX-2 expression. However, the mechanisms involved in Mn-induced microglial COX-2 up-regulation remain to be determined. The aim of this study was to investigate the role of p53 in Mn-induced COX-2 expression in microglial cells. The results showed that Mn exposure induced the up-regulation of COX-2 and inhibited the expression of p53 in BV2 microglial cells. The addition of p53 activator and the over-expression of p53 blocked the expression of COX-2 and prostaglandin E2 (PGE2), a COX-2 downstream effector, induced by Mn. Further, Mn increased the methylation of p53 DNA in microglia, while the addition of demethylation reagent 5-Aza-dC enhanced the expression of p53 but decreased the expression of COX-2. These results suggested that Mn may inhibit p53 expression through induction of DNA methylation, which can further induce the expression of COX-2 in microglial cells.

Quantifying Cellular Repair, Misrepair and Apoptosis Induced by Boron Ions, Gamma Rays and PRIMA-1 Using the RHR Formulation

The recent interaction cross-section-based formulation for radiation-induced direct cellular inactivation, mild and severe sublethal damage, DNA-repair and cell survival have been developed to accurately describe cellular repair, misrepair and apoptosis in TP53 wild-type and mutant cells. The principal idea of this new non-homologous repairable-homologous repairable (RHR) damage formulation is to separately describe the mild damage that can be rapidly handled by the most basic repair processes including the non-homologous end joining (NHEJ), and more complex damage requiring longer repair times and high-fidelity homologous recombination (HR) repair. Taking the interaction between these two key mammalian DNA repair processes more accurately into account has significantly improved the method as indicated in the original publication. Based on the principal mechanisms of 7 repair and 8 misrepair processes presently derived, it has been possible to quite accurately describe the probability that some of these repair processes when unsuccessful can induce cellular apoptosis with increasing doses of γrays, boron ions and PRIMA-1. Interestingly, for all LETs studied (≈0.3-160 eV/nm) the increase in apoptosis saturates when the cell survival reaches about 10% and the fraction of un-hit cells is well below the 1% level. It is shown that most of the early cell kill for low-to-medium LETs are due to apoptosis since the cell survival as well as the non-apoptotic cells agree very well at low doses and other death processes dominate beyond D > 1 Gy. The low-dose apoptosis is due to the fact that the full activation of the checkpoint kinases ATM and Chk2 requires >8 and >18 DSBs per cell to phosphorylate p53 at serine 15 and 20. Therefore, DNA repair is not fully activated until well after 1/2 Gy, and the cellular response may be apoptotic by default before the low-dose hyper sensitivity (LDHS) is replaced by an increased radiation tolerance as the DNA repair processes get maximal efficiency. In effect, simultaneously explaining the LDHS and inverse dose rate phenomena. The partial contributions by the eight newly derived misrepair processes was determined so they together accurately described the experimental apoptosis induction data for γ rays and boron ions. Through these partial misrepair contributions it was possible to predict the apoptotic response based solely on carefully analyzed cell survival data, demonstrating the usefulness of an accurate DNA repair-based cell survival approach. The peak relative biological effectiveness (RBE) of the boron ions was 3.5 at 160 eV/nm whereas the analogous peak relative apoptotic effectiveness (RAE) was 3.4 but at 40 eV/nm indicating the clinical value of the lower LET light ion (15 \le {\rm{LET}} \le 55{\rm{\ eV}}/{\rm{nm}},{\rm{\ }}2 \le Z \le 5) in therapeutic applications to maximize tumor apoptosis and senescence. The new survival expressions were also applied on mouse embryonic fibroblasts with key knocked-out repair genes, showing a good agreement between the principal non-homologous and homologous repair terms and also a reasonable prediction of the associated apoptotic induction. Finally, the formulation was used to estimate the increase in DNA repair and apoptotic response in combination with the mutant p53 reactivating compound PRIMA-1 and γ rays, indicating a 10-2 times increase in apoptosis with 5 μM of the compound reaching apoptosis levels not far from peak apoptosis boron ions in a TP53 mutant cell line. To utilize PRIMA-1 induced apoptosis and cellular sensitization for reactive oxygen species (ROS), concomitant biologically optimized radiation therapy is proposed to maximize the complication free tumor cure for the multitude of TP53 mutant tumors seen in the clinic. The experimental data also indicated the clinically very important high-absorbed dose ROS effect of PRIMA-1.

Role of Cell-Free DNA and Deoxyribonucleases in Tumor Progression

Many studies have reported an increase in the level of circulating cell-free DNA (cfDNA) in the blood of patients with cancer. cfDNA mainly comes from tumor cells and, therefore, carries features of its genomic profile. Moreover, tumor-derived cfDNA can act like oncoviruses, entering the cells of vulnerable organs, transforming them and forming metastatic nodes. Another source of cfDNA is immune cells, including neutrophils that generate neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs). Despite the potential eliminative effect of NETs on tumors, in some cases, their excessive generation provokes tumor growth as well as invasion. Considering both possible pathological contributions of cfDNA, as an agent of oncotransformation and the main component of NETs, the study of deoxyribonucleases (DNases) as anticancer and antimetastatic agents is important and promising. This review considers the pathological role of cfDNA in cancer development and the role of DNases as agents to prevent and/or prohibit tumor progression and the development of metastases.

Up-regulated microRNA-132 reduces the cognition-damaging effect of sevoflurane on Alzheimer's disease rats by inhibiting FOXA1

OBJECTIVE

Some studies have implied the damaging effect of sevoflurane (sevo) on cognitive function in Alzheimer's disease (AD). This research was conducted to explore the effect of microRNA (miR)-132/forkhead-box A1 (FOXA1) axis on cognitive ability of sevo-treated AD rats.

METHODS

The condensed-matter Aβ_1-40-induced AD rats were injected with miR-132- or FOXA1-related plasmids, followed by inhalation with 3% sevo. Then, the cognitive functions of AD rats were assessed. miR-132 and FOXA1 levels in hippocampal tissues of AD rats, and their interaction were identified.

RESULTS

miR-132 expression was reduced and FOXA1 mRNA and protein levels were elevated in AD rats. miR-132 targeted FOXA1. Sevo treatment impaired cognitive function in AD rats. Elevated miR-132 or inhibited FOXA1 attenuated sevo-mediated injury in AD rats. Overexpressed FOXA1 rescued the effect of elevated miR-132 in AD rats with sevo treatment.

CONCLUSION

Up-regulated miR-132 reduces the cognition-damaging effect of sevo on AD rats by inhibiting FOXA1.

Role of Mitochondria in Radiation Responses: Epigenetic, Metabolic, and Signaling Impacts

Until recently, radiation effects have been considered to be mainly due to nuclear DNA damage and their management by repair mechanisms. However, molecular biology studies reveal that the outcomes of exposures to ionizing radiation (IR) highly depend on activation and regulation through other molecular components of organelles that determine cell survival and proliferation capacities. As typical epigenetic-regulated organelles and central power stations of cells, mitochondria play an important pivotal role in those responses. They direct cellular metabolism, energy supply and homeostasis as well as radiation-induced signaling, cell death, and immunological responses. This review is focused on how energy, dose and quality of IR affect mitochondria-dependent epigenetic and functional control at the cellular and tissue level. Low-dose radiation effects on mitochondria appear to be associated with epigenetic and non-targeted effects involved in genomic instability and adaptive responses, whereas high-dose radiation effects (>1 Gy) concern therapeutic effects of radiation and long-term outcomes involving mitochondria-mediated innate and adaptive immune responses. Both effects depend on radiation quality. For example, the increased efficacy of high linear energy transfer particle radiotherapy, e.g., C-ion radiotherapy, relies on the reduction of anastasis, enhanced mitochondria-mediated apoptosis and immunogenic (antitumor) responses.