TMPRSS2-ERG gene fusion in prostate cancer

Unlocking the power of nanomedicine: the future of nutraceuticals in oncology treatment

Cancer, an intricate and multifaceted disease, is characterized by the uncontrolled proliferation of cells that can lead to serious health complications and ultimately death. Conventional therapeutic strategies mainly target rapidly dividing cancer cells, but often indiscriminately harm healthy cells in the process. As a result, there is a growing interest in exploring novel therapies that are both effective and less toxic to normal cells. Herbs have long been used as natural remedies for various diseases and conditions. Some herbal compounds exhibit potent anti-cancer properties, making them potential candidates for nutraceutical-based treatments. However, despite their promising efficacy, there are considerable limitations in utilizing herbal preparations due to their poor solubility, low bioavailability, rapid metabolism and excretion, as well as potential interference with other medications. Nanotechnology offers a unique platform to overcome these challenges by encapsulating herbal compounds within nanoparticles. This approach not only increases solubility and stability but also enhances the cellular uptake of nutraceuticals, allowing for controlled and targeted delivery of therapeutic agents directly at tumor sites. By harnessing the power of nanotechnology-enabled therapy, this new frontier in cancer treatment presents an opportunity to minimize toxicity while maximizing efficacy. In conclusion, this manuscript provides compelling evidence for integrating nanotechnology with nutraceuticals derived from herbal sources to optimize cancer therapy outcomes. We explore the roadblocks associated with traditional herbal treatments and demonstrate how nanotechnology can help circumvent these issues, paving the way for safer and more effective cancer interventions in future oncological practice.

Biomarkers for the Detection and Risk Stratification of Aggressive Prostate Cancer

Current strategies for the clinical management of prostate cancer are inadequate for a precise risk stratification between indolent and aggressive tumors. Recently developed tissue-based molecular biomarkers have refined the risk assessment of the disease. The characterization of tissue biopsy components and subsequent identification of relevant tissue-based molecular alterations have the potential to improve the clinical decision making and patient outcomes. However, tissue biopsies are invasive and spatially restricted due to tumor heterogeneity. Therefore, there is an urgent need for complementary diagnostic and prognostic options. Liquid biopsy approaches are minimally invasive with potential utility for the early detection, risk stratification, and monitoring of tumors. In this review, we focus on tissue and liquid biopsy biomarkers for early diagnosis and risk stratification of prostate cancer, including modifications on the genomic, epigenomic, transcriptomic, and proteomic levels. High-risk molecular alterations combined with orthogonal clinical parameters can improve the identification of aggressive tumors and increase patient survival.

Molecular Modeling Targeting Transmembrane Serine Protease 2 (TMPRSS2) as an Alternative Drug Target Against Coronaviruses

Since November 2019, the new Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) caused by the etiological agent SARS-CoV-2 has been responsible for several cases worldwide, becoming pandemic in March 2020. Pharmaceutical industries and academics have joined their efforts to discover new therapies to control the disease, since there are no specific drugs to combat this emerging virus. Thus, several targets have been explored, among them the transmembrane protease serine 2 (TMPRSS2) has gained greater interest in the scientific community. In this context, this review will describe the importance of TMPRSS2 protease and the significant advances in virtual screening focused on discovering new inhibitors. In this review, it was observed that molecular modeling methods could be powerful tools in identifying new molecules against SARS-CoV-2. Thus, this review could be used to guide researchers worldwide to explore the biological and clinical potential of compounds that could be promising drug candidates against SARS-CoV-2, acting by inhibition of TMPRSS2 protein.

High levels of 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC) is an adverse predictor of biochemical recurrence after prostatectomy in ERG-negative prostate cancer

Background

Prostate cancer (PC) can be stratified into distinct molecular subtypes based on TMPRSS2-ERG gene fusion status, but its potential prognostic value remains controversial. Likewise, routine clinicopathological features cannot clearly distinguish aggressive from indolent tumors at the time of diagnosis; thus, new prognostic biomarkers are urgently needed. The DNA methylation variant 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5hmC, an oxidized derivative of 5-methylcytosine) has recently emerged as a new diagnostic and/or prognostic biomarker candidate for several human malignancies. However, this remains to be systematically investigated for PC. In this study, we determined 5hmC levels in 311 PC (stratified by ERG status) and 228 adjacent non-malignant (NM) prostate tissue specimens by immunohistochemical analysis of a tissue microarray, representing a large radical prostatectomy (RP) cohort with long clinical follow-up. We investigated possible correlations between 5hmC and routine clinicopathological variables and assessed the prognostic potential of 5hmC by Kaplan-Meier and uni- and multivariate Cox regression analyses in ERG+ (n = 178) vs. ERG− (n = 133) PCs using biochemical recurrence (BCR) as endpoint.

Results

We observed a borderline significant (p = 0.06) reduction in 5hmC levels in PC compared to NM tissue samples, which was explained by a highly significant (p < 0.001) loss of 5hmC in ERG− PCs. ERG status was not predictive of BCR in this cohort (p = 0.73), and no significant association was found between BCR and 5hmC levels in ERG+ PCs (p = 0.98). In contrast, high 5hmC immunoreactivity was a significant adverse predictor of BCR after RP in ERG− PCs, independent of Gleason score, pathological tumor stage, surgical margin status, and pre-operative prostate-specific antigen (PSA) level (hazard ratio (HR) (95 % confidence interval (CI)): 1.62 (1.15–2.28), p = 0.006).

Conclusions

This is the first study to demonstrate a prognostic potential for 5hmC in PC. Our findings highlight the importance of ERG stratification in PC biomarker studies and suggest that epigenetic mechanisms involving 5hmC are important for the development and/or progression of ERG− PC.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s13148-015-0146-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The hallmarks of castration-resistant prostate cancers

Prostate cancer has become a real public health issue in industrialized countries, mainly due to patients' relapse by castration-refractory disease after androgen ablation. Castration-resistant prostate cancer is an incurable and highly aggressive terminal stage of prostate cancer, seriously jeopardizing the patient's quality of life and lifespan. The management of castration-resistant prostate cancer is complex and has opened new fields of research during the last decade leading to an improved understanding of the biology of the disease and the development of new therapies. Most advanced tumors resistant to therapy still maintain the androgen receptor-pathway, which plays a central role for survival and growth of most castration-resistant prostate cancers. Many mechanisms induce the emergence of the castration resistant phenotype through this pathway. However some non-related AR pathways like neuroendocrine cells or overexpression of anti-apoptotic proteins like Hsp27 are described to be involved in CRPC progression. More recently, loss of expression of tumor suppressor gene, post-transcriptional modification using miRNA, epigenetic alterations, alternatif splicing and gene fusion became also hallmarks of castration-resistant prostate cancer. This review presents an up-to-date overview of the androgen receptor-related mechanisms as well as the latest evidence of the non-AR-related mechanisms underlying castration-resistant prostate cancer progression.

Integrative Analysis of Normal Long Intergenic Non-Coding RNAs in Prostate Cancer

Recently, large numbers of normal human tissues have been profiled for non-coding RNAs and more than fourteen thousand long intergenic non-coding RNAs (lincRNAs) are found expressed in normal human tissues. The functional roles of these normal lincRNAs (nlincRNAs) in the regulation of protein coding genes in normal and disease biology are yet to be established. Here, we have profiled two RNA-seq datasets including cancer and matched non-neoplastic tissues from 12 individuals from diverse demography for both coding genes and nlincRNAs. We find 130 nlincRNAs significantly regulated in cancer, with 127 regulated in the same direction in the two datasets. Interestingly, according to Illumina Body Map, significant numbers of these nlincRNAs display baseline null expression in normal prostate tissues but are specific to other tissues such as thyroid, kidney, liver and testis. A number of the regulated nlincRNAs share loci with coding genes, which are either co-regulated or oppositely regulated in all cancer samples studied here. For example, in all cancer samples i) the nlincRNA, TCONS_00029157, and a neighboring tumor suppressor factor, SIK1, are both down regulated; ii) several thyroid-specific nlincRNAs in the neighborhood of the thyroid-specific gene TPO, are both up-regulated; and iii) the TCONS_00010581, an isoform of HEIH, is down-regulated while the neighboring EZH2 gene is up-regulated in cancer. Several nlincRNAs from a prostate cancer associated chromosomal locus, 8q24, are up-regulated in cancer along with other known prostate cancer associated genes including PCAT-1, PVT1, and PCAT-92. We observe that there is significant bias towards up-regulation of nlincRNAs with as high as 118 out of 127 up-regulated in cancer, even though regulation of coding genes is skewed towards down-regulation. Considering that all reported cancer associated lincRNAs (clincRNAs) are biased towards up-regulation, we conclude that this bias may be functionally relevant.