Pizotifen inhibits the proliferation and invasion of gastric cancer cells

Bioinspired sandwich-like hybrid surface functionalized scaffold capable of regulating osteogenesis, angiogenesis, and osteoclastogenesis for robust bone regeneration

Recently, strategies that focus on biofunctionalized implant surfaces to enhance bone defect healing through the synergistic regulation of osteogenesis, angiogenesis, and osteoclastogenesis have attracted increasing attention in the bone tissue engineering field. Studies have shown that the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway has an imperative effect of promoting osteogenesis and angiogenesis while reducing osteoclastogenesis. However, how to prepare biofunctionalized bone implants with balanced osteogenesis, angiogenesis, and osteoclastogenesis by activating the Wnt/β-catenin pathway has seldom been investigated. Herein, through a bioinspired dopamine chemistry and self-assembly method, BML-284 (BML), a potent and highly selective Wnt signaling activator, was loaded on a mussel-inspired polydopamine (PDA) layer that had been immobilized on the porous beta-tricalcium calcium phosphate (β-TCP) scaffold surface and subsequently modified by a biocompatible carboxymethyl chitosan hydrogel to form a sandwich-like hybrid surface. β-TCP provides a biomimetic three-dimensional porous microenvironment similar to that of natural cancellous bone, and the BML-loaded sandwich-like hybrid surface endows the scaffold with multifunctional properties for potential application in bone regeneration. The results show that the sustained release of BML from the sandwich-like hybrid surface significantly facilitates the adhesion, migration, proliferation, spreading, and osteogenic differentiation of MC3T3-E1 cells as well as the angiogenic activity of human umbilical vein endothelial cells. In addition to osteogenesis and angiogenesis, the hybrid surface also exerts critical roles in suppressing osteoclastic activity. Remarkably, in a critical-sized cranial defect model, the biofunctionalized β-TCP scaffold could potentially trigger a chain of biological events: stimulating the polarization of M2 macrophages, recruiting endogenous stem cells and endothelial cells at the injury site to enable a favorable microenvironment for greatly accelerating bone ingrowth and angiogenesis while compromising osteoclastogenesis, thereby promoting bone healing. Therefore, these surface-biofunctionalized β-TCP implants, which regulate the synergies of osteogenesis, angiogenesis, and anti-osteoclastogenesis, indicate strong potential for clinical application as advanced orthopedic implants.

Transcriptome profiles of fatty acid metabolism-related genes and immune infiltrates identify hot tumors for immunotherapy in cutaneous melanoma

Background: Immunotherapy with checkpoint inhibitors usually has a low response rate in some cutaneous melanoma (CM) cases due to its cold nature. Hence, identification of hot tumors is important to improve the immunotherapeutic efficacy and prognoses of CMs.

Methods: Fatty acid (FA) metabolism-related genes were extracted from the Gene Set Enrichment Analysis and used in the non-negative matrix factorization (NMF), copy number variation frequency, tumor mutation burden (TMB), and immune-related analyses, such as immunophenoscore (IPS). We generate a risk model and a nomogram for predicting patient prognoses and predicted the potential drugs for therapies using the Connectivity Map. Moreover, the NMF and the risk model were validated in a cohort of cases in the GSE65904 and GSE54467. At last, immunohistochemistry (IHC) was used for further validation.

Results: Based on the NMF of 11 FA metabolism-related DEGs, CM cases were stratified into two clusters. Cluster 2 cases had the characteristics of a hot tumor with higher immune infiltration levels, higher immune checkpoint (IC) molecules expression levels, higher TMB, and more sensitivity to immunotherapy and more potential immunotherapeutic drugs and were identified as hot tumors for immunotherapy. The risk model and nomogram displayed excellent predictor values. In addition, there were more small potential molecule drugs for therapies of CM patients, such as ambroxol. In immunohistochemistry (IHC), we could find that expression of PLA2G2D, ACOXL, and KMO was upregulated in CM tissues, while the expression of IL4I1, BBOX1, and CIDEA was reversed or not detected.

Conclusion: The transcriptome profiles of FA metabolism-related genes were effective for distinguishing CM into hot–cold tumors. Our findings may be valuable for development of effective immunotherapy for CM patients and for proposing new therapy strategies.

A Tumor Suppressor Gene-Based Prognostic Classifier Predicts Prognosis, Tumor Immune Infiltration, and Small Molecule Compounds in Breast Cancer

Objective: Tumor suppressor genes (TSGs) play critical roles in the cell cycle checkpoints and in modulating genomic stability. Here, we aimed to develop a TSG-based prognostic classifier for breast cancer.

Methods: Gene expression profiles and clinical information of breast cancer were curated from TCGA (discovery set) and Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) repository (GSE12093 and GSE17705 datasets as testing sets). Univariate cox regression analysis and random forest machine learning method were presented for screening characteristic TSGs. After multivariate cox regression analyses, a TSG-based prognostic classifier was constructed. The predictive efficacy was verified by C-index and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. Meanwhile, the predictive independency was assessed through uni- and multivariate cox regression analyses and stratified analyses. Tumor immune infiltration was estimated via ESTIMATE and CIBERSORT algorithms. Small molecule agents were predicted through CMap method. Molecular subtypes were clustered based on the top 100 TSGs with the most variance.

Results: A prognostic classifier including nine TSGs was established. High-risk patients were predictive of undesirable prognosis. C-index and ROC curves demonstrated its excellent predictive performance in prognosis. Also, this prognostic classifier was independent of conventional clinicopathological parameters. Low-risk patients exhibited increased infiltration levels of immune cells like T cells CD8. Totally, 48 small molecule compounds were predicted to potentially treat breast cancer. Five TSG-based molecular subtypes were finally constructed, with distinct prognosis and clinicopathological features.

Conclusion: Collectively, this study provided a TSG-based prognostic classifier with the potential to predict clinical outcomes and immune infiltration in breast cancer and identified potential small molecule agents against breast cancer.

BASP1 Suppresses Cell Growth and Metastasis through Inhibiting Wnt/β-Catenin Pathway in Gastric Cancer

Objective

Our research is designed to explore the function of brain acid soluble protein 1 (BASP1) in the progression of gastric cancer (GC) and its underlying molecular mechanisms.

Methods

In this study, the expression of BASP1 was detected by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) in both GC tissue and GC cells. The cell cloning, proliferation, apoptosis, migration, and invasion potential of AGS and HGC-27 cells were, respectively, determined using colony formation assay, 5-ethynyl-20-deoxyuridine (EDU) assay, flow cytometry, and Transwell assay. The protein expressions of Bax, caspase-3, Bcl-2, matrix metalloproteinases 2 (MMP-2), MMP-9, Wilms tumor 1 (WT1), Wnt, and β-catenin in AGS and HGC-27 cells were measured by western blot. In addition, the mRNA expressions of WT1, Wnt, and β-catenin in AGS and HGC-27 cells were detected by qRT-PCR.

Results

BASP1 expression was significantly downregulated in both GC tissue and GC cells. BASP1 overexpression markedly repressed proliferation, migration, and invasion and facilitated apoptosis in AGS and HGC-27 cells. In addition, BASP1 overexpression notably promoted the protein expression of Bax and caspase-3 in AGS and HGC-27 cells and inhibited the expression of Bcl-2, MMP-2, and MMP-9. Moreover, BASP1 overexpression significantly inhibited the mRNA and protein expression of WT1, Wnt, and β-catenin in AGS and HGC-27 cells.

Conclusion

BASP1 could significantly suppress cell proliferation, migration, and invasion and promote apoptosis through inhibiting the activation of the Wnt/β-catenin pathway in GC.

Role of Chrysophanol in Epithelial-Mesenchymal Transition in Oral Cancer Cell Lines via a Wnt-3-Dependent Pathway

Oral cancer belongs to the group of head and neck cancers. If not diagnosed or treated early, it can be life threatening. Epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) plays an important role in tumor formation and progression. An increase in the presence of the EMT phenotype causes tumor cell proliferation, migration, invasion, and poor prognosis. Therefore, attenuating carcinogenesis via EMT inhibition is a good strategy. Herein, we will determine the pharmacological effects of chrysophanol on the EMT in FaDu cells. To analyze EMT, we detected the expression EMT markers, including α-SMA, β-catenin, vimentin, N-cadherin, E-cadherin, phospho-GSK-3β, and nuclear translocations of p65 and β-catenin by western blotting. Additionally, accumulating evidence indicates that reactive oxygen species (ROS) mediate EMT. Our results showed that the level of ROS was significantly increased after chrysophanol treatment. We further speculated that chrysophanol-mediated EMT and metastasis are involved in the Wnt-3-dependent signaling pathway. The inhibition of the EMT phenotype and metastasis and accumulation of ROS caused by chrysophanol was reversed by treatment with the Wnt-3 agonist Bml 284. Therefore, our findings indicated that chrysophanol altered EMT formation, ROS accumulation, and metastasis via the Wnt-3-dependent signaling pathway.

Identification of potential prognostic small nucleolar RNA biomarkers for predicting overall survival in patients with sarcoma

Objective

The main purpose of the present study is to screen prognostic small nucleolar RNA (snoRNA) markers using the RNA‐sequencing (RNA‐seq) dataset of The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) sarcoma cohort.

Methods

The sarcoma RNA‐seq dataset comes from the TCGA cohort. A total of 257 sarcoma patients were included into the prognostic analysis. Multiple bioinformatics analysis methods for functional annotation of snoRNAs and screening of targeted drugs, including biological network gene ontology tool, Gene Ontology (GO), Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG), Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA), and connectivity map (CMap) are used.

Results

We had identified 15 snoRNAs that were significantly related to the prognosis of sarcoma and constructed a prognostic signature based on four prognostic snoRNA (U3, SNORA73B, SNORD46, and SNORA26) expression values. Functional annotation of these four snoRNAs by their co‐expression genes suggests that some of them were closely related to cell cycle‐related biological processes and tumor‐related signaling pathways, such as Wnt, mitogen‐activated protein kinase, target of rapamycin, and nuclear factor‐kappa B signaling pathway. GSEA of the risk score suggests that high risk score phenotype was significantly enriched in cell cycle‐related biological processes, protein SUMOylation, DNA replication, p53 binding, regulation of DNA repair, and DNA methylation, as well as Myc, Wnt, RB1, E2F, and TEL pathways. Then we also used the CMap online tool to screen five targeted drugs (rilmenidine, pizotifen, amiprilose, quipazine, and cinchonidine) for this risk score model in sarcoma.

Conclusion

Our study have identified 15 snoRNAs that may be serve as novel prognostic biomarkers for sarcoma, and constructed a prognostic signature based on four prognostic snoRNA expression values.