The Controversial Role of Autophagy in Ewing Sarcoma Pathogenesis-Current Treatment Options

Autophagy induced by Helicobacter Pylori infection can lead to gastric cancer dormancy, metastasis, and recurrence: new insights

According to the findings of recent research, Helicobacter Pylori (H. pylori) infection is not only the primary cause of gastric cancer (GC), but it is also linked to the spread and invasion of GC through a number of processes and factors that contribute to virulence. In this study, we discussed that H. pylori infection can increase autophagy in GC tumor cells, leading to poor prognosis in such patients. Until now, the main concerns have been focused on H. pylori's role in GC development. According to our hypothesis, however, H. pylori infection may also lead to GC dormancy, metastasis, and recurrence by stimulating autophagy. Therefore, understanding how H. pylori possess these processes through its virulence factors and various microRNAs can open new windows for providing new prevention and/or therapeutic approaches to combat GC dormancy, metastasis, and recurrence which can occur in GC patients with H. pylori infection with targeting autophagy and eradicating H. pylori infection.

An Insight into the Arising Role of MicroRNAs in Hepatocellular Carcinoma: Future Diagnostic and Therapeutic Approaches

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) constitutes a frequent highly malignant form of primary liver cancer and is the third cause of death attributable to malignancy. Despite the improvement in the therapeutic strategies with the exploration of novel pharmacological agents, the survival rate for HCC is still low. Shedding light on the multiplex genetic and epigenetic background of HCC, such as on the emerging role of microRNAs, is considered quite promising for the diagnosis and the prediction of this malignancy, as well as for combatting drug resistance. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) constitute small noncoding RNA sequences, which play a key role in the regulation of several signaling and metabolic pathways, as well as of pivotal cellular functions such as autophagy, apoptosis, and cell proliferation. It is also demonstrated that miRNAs are significantly implicated in carcinogenesis, either acting as tumor suppressors or oncomiRs, while aberrations in their expression levels are closely associated with tumor growth and progression, as well as with local invasion and metastatic dissemination. The arising role of miRNAs in HCC is in the spotlight of the current scientific research, aiming at the development of novel therapeutic perspectives. In this review, we will shed light on the emerging role of miRNAs in HCC.

Expression of lactate-related signatures correlates with immunosuppressive microenvironment and prognostic prediction in ewing sarcoma

Objectives: Ewing sarcoma (EWS) is an aggressive tumor of bone and soft tissue. Growing evidence indicated lactate as a pivotal mediator of crosstalk between tumor energy metabolism and microenvironmental regulation. However, the contribution of lactate-related genes (LRGs) in EWS is still unclear.

Methods: We obtained the transcriptional data of EWS patients from the GEO database and identified differentially expressed-LRGs (DE-LRGs) between EWS patient samples and normal tissues. Unsupervised cluster analysis was utilized to recognize lactate modulation patterns based on the expression profile of DE-LRGs. Functional enrichment including GSEA and GSVA analysis was conducted to identify molecular signaling enriched in different subtypes. ESTIMATE, MCP and CIBERSORT algorithm was used to explore tumor immune microenvironment (TIME) between subtypes with different lactate modulation patterns. Then, lactate prognostic risk signature was built via univariate, LASSO and multivariate Cox analysis. Finally, we performed qPCR analysis to validate candidate gene expression.

Result: A total of 35 DE-LRGs were identified and functional enrichment analysis indicated that these LRGs were involved in mitochondrial function. Unsupervised cluster analysis divided EWS patients into two lactate modulation patterns and we revealed that patients with Cluster 1 pattern were linked to poor prognosis and high lactate secretion status. Moreover, TIME analysis indicated that the abundance of multiple immune infiltrating cells were dramatically elevated in Cluster 1 to Cluster 2, including CAFs, endothelial cells, Macrophages M2, etc., which might contribute to immunosuppressive microenvironment. We also noticed that expression of several immune checkpoint proteins were clearly increased in Cluster 1 to Cluster 2. Subsequently, seven genes were screened to construct LRGs prognostic signature and the performance of the resulting signature was validated in the validation cohort. Furthermore, a nomogram integrating LRGs signature and clinical characteristics was developed to predict effectively the 4, 6, and 8-year prognosis of EWS patients.

Conclusion: Our study revealed the role of LRGs in immunosuppressive microenvironment and predicting prognosis in EWS and provided a robust tool to predict the prognosis of EWS patients.

The prognostic value of autophagy related genes with potential protective function in Ewing sarcoma

Background

Ewing sarcoma (ES) is the second most common primary malignant bone tumor mainly occurring in children, adolescents and young adults with high metastasis and mortality. Autophagy has been reported to be involved in the survival of ES, but the role remains unclear. Therefore, it’s necessary to investigate the prognostic value of autophagy related genes using bioinformatics methods.

Results

ATG2B, ATG10 and DAPK1 were final screened genes for a prognostic model. KM and risk score plots showed patients in high score group had better prognoses both in training and validation sets. C-indexes of the model for training and validation sets were 0.68 and 0.71, respectively. Calibration analyses indicated the model had high prediction accuracy in training and validation sets. The AUC values of ROC for 1-, 3-, 5-year prediction were 0.65, 0.73 and 0.84 in training set, 0.88, 0.73 and 0.79 in validation set, which suggested high prediction accuracy of the model. Decision curve analyses showed that patients could benefit much from the model. Differential and functional analyses suggested that autophagy and apoptosis were upregulated in high risk score group.

Conclusions

ATG2B, ATG10 and DAPK1 were autophagy related genes with potential protective function in ES. The prognostic model established by them exhibited excellent prediction accuracy and discriminatory capacities. They might be used as potential prognostic biomarkers and therapeutic targets in ES.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12859-022-04849-x.

Prognosis Implication of a Novel Metabolism-Related Gene Signature in Ewing Sarcoma

Ewing sarcoma (ES) is one of the most common bone cancers in adolescents and children. Growing evidence supports the view that metabolism pathways play critical roles in numerous cancers (He et al. (2020)). However, the correlation between metabolism-associated genes (MTGs) and Ewing sarcoma has not been investigated systematically. Here, based on the univariate Cox regression analysis, we get survival genes from differentially expressed genes (DEGs) from Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) cohort. Multivariate Cox regression analysis and least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) regression analysis were employed to establish the MTG signature. Comprehensive survival analyses including receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves and Kaplan-Meier analysis were applied to estimate the independent prognostic value of the signature. The ICGC cohort served as the validation cohort. A nomogram was constructed based on the risk score of the MTG signature and other independent clinical variables. The CIBERSORT algorithm was applied to estimate immune infiltration. In addition, we explored the correlation between MTG signature and immune checkpoints. Collectively, this work presents a novel MTG signature for prognostic prediction of Ewing sarcoma. It also suggests six genes that are potential prognostic indicators and therapeutic targets for ES.

The Implication of Autophagy in Gastric Cancer Progression

Gastric cancer is the fifth most common malignancy and the third leading cause of cancer-related death worldwide. The three entirely variable entities have distinct epidemiology, molecular characteristics, prognosis, and strategies for clinical management. However, many gastric tumors appear to be resistant to current chemotherapeutic agents. Moreover, a significant number of gastric cancer patients, with a lack of optimal treatment strategies, have reduced survival. In recent years, multiple research data have highlighted the importance of autophagy, an essential catabolic process of cytoplasmic component digestion, in cancer. The role of autophagy as a tumor suppressor or tumor promoter mechanism remains controversial. The multistep nature of the autophagy process offers a wide array of targetable points for designing novel chemotherapeutic strategies. The purpose of this review is to summarize the current knowledge regarding the interplay between gastric cancer development and the autophagy process and decipher the role of autophagy in this kind of cancer. A plethora of different agents that direct or indirect target autophagy may be a novel therapeutic approach for gastric cancer patients.

The basic characteristics of extracellular vesicles and their potential application in bone sarcomas

Bone sarcomas are rare cancers accompanied by metastatic disease, mainly including osteosarcoma, Ewing sarcoma and chondrosarcoma. Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are membrane vesicles released by cells in the extracellular matrix, which carry important signal molecules, can stably and widely present in various body fluids, such as plasma, saliva and scalp fluid, spinal cord, breast milk, and urine liquid. EVs can transport almost all types of biologically active molecules (DNA, mRNA, microRNA (miRNA), proteins, metabolites, and even pharmacological compounds). In this review, we summarized the basic biological characteristics of EVs and focused on their application in bone sarcomas. EVs can be use as biomarker vehicles for diagnosis and prognosis in bone sarcomas. The role of EVs in bone sarcoma has been analyzed point-by-point. In the microenvironment of bone sarcoma, bone sarcoma cells, mesenchymal stem cells, immune cells, fibroblasts, osteoclasts, osteoblasts, and endothelial cells coexist and interact with each other. EVs play an important role in the communication between cells. Based on multiple functions in bone sarcoma, this review provides new ideas for the discovery of new therapeutic targets and new diagnostic analysis.