Glypicans are a family of heparan sulfate proteoglycans that are bound to the cell surface by a glycosyl-phosphatidylinositol anchor. Six members of this family have been identified in mammals. In ...general, glypicans are highly expressed during development, and their expression pattern suggests that they are involved in morphogenesis. One member of this family, glypican-3, is mutated in the Simpson–Golabi–Behmel syndrome. This syndrome is characterized by overgrowth and various developmental abnormalities that indicate that glypican-3 inhibits proliferation and cell survival in the embryo. It has consequently been proposed that glypicans can regulate the activity of several growth factors that play a critical role in morphogenesis.
Tumor necrosis factor (TNF) family ligand TNF-alpha and Fas ligand (FasL) can trigger apoptosis in solid tumors, but their clinical usage has been limited by hepatotoxicity. TNF-related ...apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL) is a newly identified member of the TNF family, and its clinical application currently is under a similar debate. Here, we report a recombinant soluble form of human TRAIL (114 to 281 amino acids) that induces apoptosis in tumor cells but not human hepatocytes. We first isolated human hepatocytes from patients and showed that the human hepatocytes expressed Fas but no TRAIL death receptor DR4 and little DR5 on the cell surface. Antibody cross-linked FasL, but not TRAIL, triggered apoptosis of the human hepatocytes through cleavage of caspases. We then examined TRAIL hepatotoxicity in severe combined immunodeficient/Alb-uPA chimeric mice harboring human hepatocytes. Intravenous injection of FasL, but not TRAIL, caused apoptotic death of human hepatocytes within the chimeric liver, thus killing the mice. Finally, we showed that repeated intraperitoneal injections of TRAIL inhibited intraperitoneal and subcutaneous tumor growth without inducing apoptosis in human hepatocytes in these chimeric mice. The results indicate that the recombinant soluble human TRAIL has a profound apoptotic effect on tumor cells but is nontoxic to human hepatocytes in vitro and in vivo.
Human Ficolin-2 (L-ficolins) encoded by FCN2 gene is a soluble serum protein that plays an important role in innate immunity and is mainly expressed in the liver. Ficolin-2 serum levels and FCN2 ...single nucleotide polymorphisms were associated to several infectious diseases. We initially screened the complete FCN2 gene in 48 healthy individuals of Vietnamese ethnicity. We genotyped a Vietnamese cohort comprising of 423 clinically classified hepatitis B virus patients and 303 controls for functional single nucleotide polymorphisms in the promoter region (-986G>A, -602G>A, -4A>G) and in exon 8 (+6424G>T) by real-time PCR and investigated the contribution of FCN2 genotypes and haplotypes to serum Ficolin-2 levels, viral load and liver enzyme levels. Haplotypes differed significantly between patients and controls (P = 0.002) and the haplotype AGGG was found frequently in controls in comparison to patients with hepatitis B virus and hepatocellular carcinoma (P = 0.0002 and P<0.0001) conferring a protective effect. Ficolin-2 levels differed significantly between patients and controls (p<0.0001). Patients with acute hepatitis B had higher serum Ficolin-2 levels compared to other patient groups and controls.The viral load was observed to be significantly distributed among the haplotypes (P = 0.04) and the AAAG haplotype contributed to higher Ficolin-2 levels and to viral load. Four novel single nucleotide polymorphisms in introns (-941G>T, -310G>A, +2363G>A, +4882G>A) and one synonymous mutation in exon 8 (+6485G>T) was observed. Strong linkage was found between the variant -986G>A and -4A>G. The very first study on Vietnamese cohort associates both Ficolin-2 serum levels and FCN2 haplotypes to hepatitis B virus infection and subsequent disease progression.
BACKGROUND: Bone metastasis is common in renal cell carcinoma (RCC), and the lesions are mainly osteolytic. The mechanism of bone destruction in RCC bone metastasis is unknown. METHODS: We used a ...direct intrafemur injection of mice with bone-derived 786-O RCC cells (Bo-786) as an in vivo model to study if inhibition of osteoblast differentiation is involved in osteolytic bone lesions in RCC bone metastasis. RESULTS: We showed that bone-derived Bo-786 cells induced osteolytic bone lesions in the femur of mice. We examined the effect of conditioned medium of Bo-786 cells (Bo-786 CM) on both primary mouse osteoblasts and MC3T3-E1 preosteoblasts and found that Bo-786 CM inhibited osteoblast differentiation. Secretome analysis of Bo-786 CM revealed that BIGH3 (Beta ig h3 protein), also known as TGFBI (transforming growth factor beta-induced protein), is highly expressed. We generated recombinant BIGH3 and found that BIGH3 inhibited osteoblast differentiation in vitro. In addition, CM from Bo-786 BIGH3 knockdown cells (786-BIGH3 KD) reduced the inhibition of osteoblast differentiation compared to CM from vector control. Intrafemural injection of mice with 786-BIGH3 KD cells showed a reduction in osteolytic bone lesions compared to vector control. Immunohistochemical staining of 18 bone metastasis specimens from human RCC showed strong BIGH3 expression in 11/18 (61%) and moderate BIGH3 expression in 7/18 (39%) of the specimens. CONCLUSIONS: These results suggest that suppression of osteoblast differentiation by BIGH3 is one of the mechanisms that enhance osteolytic lesions in RCC bone metastasis, and raise the possibilty that treatments that increase bone formation may improve therapy outcomes.
Disseminated prostate cancer cells must survive in circulation for metastasis to occur. Mechanisms by which these cells survive are not well understood. By immunohistochemistry of human tissues, we ...found that levels of β1 integrins and integrin-induced autophosphorylation of FAK (pFAK-Y397) are increased in prostate cancer cells in primary prostate cancer and lymph node metastases, suggesting that β1 integrin activation occurs in metastatic progression of prostate cancer. A conformation-sensitive antibody, 9EG7, was used to examine β1 integrin activation. We found that β1 integrins are constitutively activated in highly metastatic PC3 and PC3-mm2 cells, with less activation in low metastatic LNCaP and C4-2B4 cells. Increased β1 integrin activation as well as the anoikis resistance in prostate cancer cells correlated with metastatic potential in vivo. Knockdown of β1 integrin abrogated anoikis resistance in PC3-mm2 cells. In agreement with β1 integrin activation, PC3-mm2 cells strongly adhered to type I collagen and fibronectin, a process inhibited by the β1 integrin-neutralizing antibody mAb 33B6. mAb 33B6 also inhibited the phosphorylation of β1 integrin downstream effectors, focal adhesion kinase (FAK) and AKT, leading to a 3-fold increase in PC3-mm2 apoptosis. Systemic delivery of mAb 33B6 suppressed spontaneous metastasis of PC3-mm2 from the prostate to distant lymph nodes following intraprostatic injection and suppressed metastasis of PC3-mm2 to multiple organs following intracardiac injection. Thus, constitutively activated β1 integrins play a role in survival of PC3-mm2 cells in circulation and represent a potential target for metastasis prevention.
•ZnO films were deposited on PS substrates by RF magnetron sputtering.•Post-annealing has effect on the microstructure and optical properties of ZnO/PS films.•The intensity of PL peak has obviously ...increased with the annealing temperature increasing.•ZnO films formed a broad PL band including the violet, blue, green and red–orange emission.
In this study, porous silicon (PS) templates were formed by electrochemical anodization on p-type (100) silicon wafer and ZnO films were deposited on PS substrates using radio frequency reactive magnetron sputtering technique. The effects of annealing temperature on the microstructure and optical properties of the ZnO/PS nanocomposite films were systematically investigated by X-ray diffraction (XRD), UV–Visible spectroscopy and fluorescence spectrophotometry. XRD results indicated that all ZnO films were polycrystalline in nature with a hexagonal wurtzite structure and the (0002) oriented ZnO films deposited on PS substrates had the best crystal quality under annealing at 700°C. It was demonstrated that the optical band edge shifted to longer wavelength as the annealing temperature shifted from room temperature (RT) to 700°C due to the quantum confinement effect. Furthermore, the optical band gaps calculated based on the quantum confinement model were in good agreement with the experimental values. Photoluminescence (PL) measurements at RT revealed that ZnO/PS films formed a broad PL band including the violet, blue and green emissions from ZnO and red–orange emission from the PS. The mechanism and interpretation of broadband PL of the films were discussed in detail.
A finite element methodology for evolution of cracks in thin shells using mid-surface displacement and director field discontinuities is presented. We enrich the mid-surface displacement and director ...fields of a discrete Kirchhoff–Love quadrilateral element using a piecewise decomposition of element kinematics, which leads to a basis that is a variant of the one used in the extended finite element method. This allows considerable simplifications in the inclusion of the shell director field. A cohesive law is employed to represent the progressive release of the fracture energy. In contrast with previous works, we retain the original quadrature points after the formation of a crack, which, in combination with an elasto-plastic multiplicative decomposition of the deformation gradient, avoids the previously required internal variable mapping during crack evolution. Results are presented for large strain elastic and elasto-plastic crack propagation.
Interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICMEs) often consist of a shock wave, sheath region, and ejecta region. The ejecta regions are divided into two broad classes: magnetic clouds (MCs) that ...exhibit the characteristics of magnetic flux ropes, and non-magnetic clouds (NMCs) that do not. As CMEs result from eruption of magnetic flux ropes, it is important to answer why NMCs do not have the flux rope features. One claims that NMCs lose their original flux rope features due to the interactions between ICMEs or ICMEs and other large-scale structures during their transit in the heliosphere. The other attributes this phenomenon to the geometric selection effect; i.e., when an ICME has its nose (flank, including leg and non-leg flanks) pass through the observing spacecraft, the MC (NMC) features will be detected along the spacecraft trajectory within the ejecta. In this Letter, we examine which explanation is more reasonable through the geometric properties of ICMEs. If the selection effect leads to different ejecta types, MCs should have narrower sheath region compared to NMCs from the statistical point of view, which is confirmed by our statistics. In addition, we find that NMCs have similar sizes in solar cycles 23 and 24, and NMCs are smaller than MCs in cycle 23 but larger than MCs in cycle 24. This suggests that most NMCs have their leg flank pass through the spacecraft. Our geometric analyses support that all ICMEs should have a magnetic flux rope structure near 1 au.
Neuro-ophthalmology is an interdisciplinary subspecialty that occupies an important position in ophthalmology. We review the development history and subspecialty construction of the ...neuro-ophthalmology in China, showing the achievements, providing reference for the clinical and scientific research of neuro-ophthalmology in the future, commemorating the predecessors and inspiring the contemporary neuro-ophthalmology profession to forge ahead. Congratulations on the 70th anniversary of the publication of the
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With interference alignment in the spatial domain, the achievable degrees of freedom (DoF) of a single-hop multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) interference channel (IC) are limited by the number of ...antennas at the sources and destinations. The use of relays introduces additional freedoms to manage the interference and can enhance the DoF performance. However, the characterization of the DoF regions with relays is much more complicated and is not available in the literature. In this paper, we shall investigate the DoF of the dual-hop MIMO IC via interference alignment. Based on the solvability of the alignment conditions, the upper bound for the maximum achievable DoF tuple is obtained. To evaluate the tightness of the derived bound, we further propose an iterative algorithm to determine the processing matrices at the sources, relays, and destinations for a given feasible DoF tuple. It is shown that the proposed algorithm can achieve the upper bound for the sum DoF in the low and high DoF regions, where the achievability indicates that the upper bound indeed gives the maximum sum DoF. It is also found that despite the DoF loss caused by the half-duplexity assumption, the dual-hop IC with sufficient number of relays can still outperform the conventional single-hop IC under most circumstances.
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