The Role of Thrombomodulin in Estrogen-Receptor-Positive Breast Cancer Progression, Metastasis, and Curcumin Sensitivity

Haemostatic Gene Expression in Cancer-Related Immunothrombosis: Contribution for Venous Thromboembolism and Ovarian Tumour Behaviour

Ovarian cancer (OC) is the deadliest gynaecological malignancy. Identifying new prognostic biomarkers is an important research field. Haemostatic components together with leukocytes can drive cancer progression while increasing the susceptibility to venous thromboembolism (VTE) through immunothrombosis. Unravelling the underlying complex interactions offers the prospect of uncovering relevant OC prognostic biomarkers, predictors of cancer-associated thrombosis (CAT), and even potential targets for cancer therapy. Thus, this study evaluated the expression of F3, F5, F8, F13A1, TFPI1, and THBD in peripheral blood cells (PBCs) of 52 OC patients. Those with VTE after tumour diagnosis had a worse overall survival (OS) compared to their counterparts (mean OS of 13.8 ± 4.1 months and 47.9 ± 5.7 months, respectively; log-rank test, p = 0.001). Low pre-chemotherapy F3 and F8 expression levels were associated with a higher susceptibility for OC-related VTE after tumour diagnosis (χ2, p < 0.05). Regardless of thrombogenesis, patients with low baseline F8 expression had a shorter progression-free survival (PFS) than their counterparts (adjusted hazard ratio (aHR) = 2.54; p = 0.021). Among those who were not under platelet anti-aggregation therapy, low F8 levels were also associated with a shorter OS (aHR = 6.16; p = 0.006). Moving forward, efforts should focus on external validation in larger cohorts.

The role of thrombomodulin in modulating ITGB3 expression and its implications for triple-negative breast cancer progression

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is the most aggressive subtype of breast cancer (BC) compared to other BC subtypes in clinical settings. Currently, there are no effective therapeutic strategies for TNBC treatment. Therefore, there is an urgent need to identify suitable biomarkers or therapeutic targets for TNBC patients. Thrombomodulin (TM) plays a role in cancer progression and metastasis in many different cancers. However, the role of TM in TNBC is not yet fully understood. First, silenced-TM in MDA-MB-231 cells caused an increase in proliferative and metastatic activity. In contrast, overexpression of TM in Hs578T cells caused a reduction in proliferation, invasion, and migration rate. Using RNA-seq analysis, we found that Integrin beta 3 (ITGB3) expression may be a downstream target of TM. Furthermore, we found an increase in ITGB3 levels in TM-KD cells by QPCR and western blot analysis but a decrease in ITGB3 levels in TM-overexpressing cells. We found phospho-smad2/3 levels were increased in TM-KD cells but decreased in TM-overexpressing cells. This implies that TM negatively regulates ITGB3 levels through the activation of the smad2/3 pathway. Silencing ITGB3 in TM-KD cells caused a decrease in proliferation and migration. Finally, we found that higher ITGB3 levels were correlated with poor overall survival and relapse-free survival in patients with TNBC. Our results indicated a novel regulatory relationship between TM and ITGB3 in TNBC.

Small molecule tractable PARP inhibitors: Scaffold construction approaches, mechanistic insights and structure activity relationship

Diverse drug design strategies viz. molecular hybridization, substituent installation, scaffold hopping, isosteric replacement, high-throughput screening, induction and separation of chirality, structure modifications of phytoconstituents and use of structural templates have been exhaustively leveraged in the last decade to load the chemical toolbox of PARP inhibitors. Resultantly, numerous promising scaffolds have been pinpointed that in turn have led to the resuscitation of the credence to PARP inhibitors as cancer therapeutics. This review briefly presents the physiological functions of PARPs, the pharmacokinetics, and pharmacodynamics, and the interaction profiles of FDA-approved PARP inhibitors. Comprehensively covered is the section on the drug design strategies employed by drug discovery enthusiasts for furnishing PARP inhibitors. The impact of structural variations in the template of designed scaffolds on enzymatic and cellular activity (structure-activity relationship studies) has been discussed. The insights gained through the biological evaluation such as profiling of physicochemical properties andin vitroADME properties, PK assessments, and high-dose pharmacology are covered.