Month: March 2020

These have not assessed the differential patterns in plasma cytokine levels for patients receiving RT alone versus chemoRT. In the present study, the overall concentration of cytokines were different dependent upon treatment group for Eotaxin, IL-33, IL-6, MDC, MIP-1a and VEGF. In both groups, the peak elevation in plasma cytokine concentration for MIP-1a occurred at 4 weeks into treatment, whilst peak elevation in Eotaxin and VEGF occurred at 12 weeks after treatment completion. Changes in plasma concentrations of cytokines varied considerably between treatment groups at other time points. Our findings suggest that future studies investigating the kinetics of these plasma levels should not uniformly group patients receiving RT alone and chemoRT BAY-60-7550 together. In several previous clinical studies of patients treated for NSCLC there have been contradictory reports of associations between RT induced blood cytokine levels and clinical toxicity. A study by Arpin et al. also found changes in IL-6 to be prognostic for radiation pneumonitis, along with combined covariations of IL-6 and IL-10. Similar to our study, TNF-a was not correlated to toxicity. In a study by Crohns et al., VEGF, TNF-a, IL-1b, IL-6 and IL-8 levels in the serum were analysed in patients receiving various regimes of RT with mean dose of 46.9 Gy. These investigators were not able to demonstrate any significant changes from the baseline levels of these cytokines at two weeks or 3 months after the commencement of RT. Similarly, a study by Ru˝be et al. measured levels of TGF-b and IL-6 weekly during RT and could not find correlation with symptomatic pneumonitis and plasma level cytokines levels. In their study, patients received a range of treatments including definitive RT alone, definitive chemoRT, low dose twice weekly palliative accelerated RT. This is in contrast to several reports from Anscher’s group and a study from Zhao et al. indicating that elevation of TGF-b late during RT is associated with risk of pulmonary toxicity. In a study by Chen et al., levels of IL-1a and IL-6 but not TNFa were consistently elevated prior to and throughout treatment in patients whom developed radiation pneumonitis. In this same patient cohort, levels of e-selectin, l-selectin, TGF-b1 and bFGF varied but were not correlated with radiation pneumonitis. Again this cohort had considerable treatment heterogeneity, with 4 of the total 24 patients not having NSCLC, with an average delivered radiation dose of 60–64 Gy, and 3 of 15 patients having had their chemotherapy delivered neoadjuvantly prior to the radiation course. In the context of the previous literature, the strength of our study lies in the standardised treatment characteristics in our patient cohort and the large panel of cytokines tested. We discovered that in addition to IL-6, early changes in plasma levels of four previously unreported cytokines were associated with the risk of pulmonary toxicity. It is important to recognise the limitations of this study. In this study we were not able to control for potential confounding effects of patient stage and volume of irradiated amongst the RT and chemoRT cohorts.

The functional importance of the additional N-terminal fragment in MtbRho is further evident from the inability of the truncated protein, which lacks the subdomain, to complement EcRho. It is notable that while N-229 can SJN 2511 stably interact with mycobacterial RNA, it failed to bind efficiently to poly-dC80. In contrast, full-length MtbRho can interact with both the substrates. The primary RNA-binding motifs of Rho are known to that have a preference for C-rich, unstructured RNA and their absence in N-229 could have compromised its ability to interact with poly-dC80. It is also possible that the extended N-terminal subdomain has evolved to bind efficiently to longer RNA molecules, such as the sdaA RNA in this study. Thus, it seems that MtbRho, while retaining ability to bind to the canonical, C-rich substrates of Rho, has a gain-of-function whereby the extended N-terminal region can facilitate binding to mycobacterial RNA. Since MtbRho is a weaker ATPase, interacting with long RNA could result in efficient spooling of RNA around itself and facilitate catching up with RNAP to bring about termination in a largely ATP-independent manner. The inability of MtbRho to complement the strain E.coli AMO14 could be attributed to several reasons. The N-terminal subdomain of MtbRho can facilitate binding to RNA that is not a natural substrate for EcRho. This, in turn, could lead to spurious unregulated termination by MtbRho in the E. coli strain. Alternatively, the lower ATPase activity of MtbRho could result in inefficient termination, especially since rate of transcription elongation by E.coli RNAP is considerably faster than that of mycobacterial RNAP. Approximately 50% of E. coli genes rely on Rho for termination. Hence, delayed or imprecise termination could lead to run-off transcripts, ectopic expression from genomic islands and cryptic prophages. The formation of a distinct hexameric species by glutaraldehyde crosslinking indicates that MtbRho can exist as a hexamer even in absence of its substrate RNA and ATP. DLS and analytical gel filtration studies confirm that at least a fraction of MtbRho exists as hexamer in solution. This hexameric population could provide a ‘readily available’ termination-proficient MtbRho within Mtb cells. This is in contrast to EcRho which forms hexamer only under catalytic conditions. Our results show that the oligomerization status of MtbRho is significantly influenced by its interaction with RNA. Although a fraction of MtbRho always exists as a,400 kDa hexamer, it becomes the predominant form in presence of RNA. The availability of intracellular RNA would thus, act as a cue and ‘activate’ MtbRho to its functional hexameric form. This, in turn, could achieve a functional coordination between MtbRNAP and MtbRho to ensure an orchestrated transcription elongation and termination. In this context, it is noteworthy that the hexamers formed by two Mtb elongation/termination factors.

MtbRho has a monomeric size of 65 kDa, as estimated from sequence analysis and also shown by mass spectrometry. However, the protein showed anomalous migration at,80 kDa on SDS-PAGE, probably due to the presence of clusters of polar residues in the subdomain. In the several steps involved in Rho-mediated transcription termination, the first step of Rho’s action is its binding to the rut site. EcRho is known to have a preference for C-rich, unstructured RNA for initial Rho binding and polycytidylic acid has been used to study Rho activity in vitro. The residues of EcRho that have been implicated in binding to a C-rich sequence the motifs involved in RNA-dependent ATPase activity are similar in MtbRho. The ATPase activity of MtbRho in presence of synthetic homopolymeric polyC, polyA and polyU is shown in Figure 1A. While polyC is, not unexpectedly, the best substrate, polyA and polyU also stimulate the hydrolysis of ATP. Homopolymeric polyC, polyA and polyU are, however, not natural substrates of MtbRho. In vivo, MtbRho would function in presence of various mycobacterial RNAs and it is likely that MtbRho has evolved a greater ability to interact with its natural substrates. To assess if MtbRho could use mycobacterial RNA as substrate for ATPase, cellular RNA from M. smegmatis mc2155 was used. The results presented in Figure 1B show that MtbRho can hydrolyse ATP in presence of mycobacterial RNAs. The ATPase activity was specific to MtbRho as it was inhibited by Bicyclomcycin. To study if a specific mycobacterial RNA molecule could be used as a substrate for ATPase activity, we used a RNA corresponding to the region downstream of the sdaA gene of M. tuberculosis genome. This RNA was chosen as in silico analysis revealed the absence of intrinsic terminator downstream of the sdaA gene and hence it is likely target for Rho-dependent termination. The results presented in Figure 2A and B show that MtbRho can hydrolyse ATP in presence of sdaA RNA. But, MtbRho is inherently a weaker ATPase. The rate of ATP hydrolysis by MtbRho in presence of polyC was.10-fold less when compared to that of EcRho. Also, as previous studies have shown, MtbRho exhibited a higher Km for ATP than EcRho. The slow rate of ATP hydrolysis indicates the intrinsically low activity of the enzyme. However, when mycobacterial cellular RNA was used, the ATPase rate of MtbRho became similar to previous GDC-0879 observations where E. coli terminator RNAs had been used. Remarkably, the rates of MtbRho and EcRho became comparable in presence of mycobacterial cellular RNA. This indicated that MtbRho could be more proficient in using mycobacterial RNA as substrate than its E. coli homolog. The superior ability of MtbRho to utilize mycobacterial RNA was further evident when, in presence of sdaA RNA, a specific Mtb RNA, MtbRho hydrolysed ATP at a rate that is 2-fold higher than that reported in presence of the E. coli terminators, while EcRho was unable to use the sdaA RNA for ATPase activity.

Presence of hydrodynamic forces and blood cell interactions. To date, it is not clear what effect the nanoscale coating of plasma proteins onto VTC surfaces may have on their BMN673 PARP inhibitor interaction with the vascular wall in the complex environment of human blood flow, which is critical for any intravenously administered VTC system designed for human use. In general, the capture and binding of targeted particles to a reactive surface from flow can occur on the order of one to tens of seconds depending on the kinetics of ligand/receptor interaction and provided there is no steric hindrance to receptor-ligand contact or physical barrier to particle localization to the surface. In several experimental works with simple buffer or human blood flows in vitro, polystyrene or silica-based microparticles have been shown to effectively localize and bind to the vascular wall. However, limited work currently exist in the literature on the flow adhesion to reactive surfaces of poly based-particles that are ubiquitously proposed for use as VTCs, all of which have reported on adhesion only in buffer flow assays. Here, we investigate the role of the plasma protein corona in the adhesion of poly particles to a vascular wall model from human blood flow via in vitro assays. Specifically, we characterized the adhesion of sLea-conjugated PLGA particles in laminar and pulsatile human blood flows to a monolayer of activated endothelial cells in a parallel plate flow chamber. sLea is a carbohydrate ligand with favorable binding kinetics to E-selectin, overexpressed by inflamed ECs, in flow. This ligand has also previously been proposed for targeting therapeutics in many diseases. The data presented here show that vascular-targeted PLGA particles do not effectively adhere to inflamed ECs in human blood flow of different magnitude and flow pattern, an effect that was not observed for PS spheres. We conclude that this phenomena is linked to the unique adsorption of specific “negative proteins” onto the surface of PLGA particles. This conclusion is supported by data from control experiments that shows higher binding of PLGA particles with buffer and RBC-in-buffer flows compare to the values observed in whole blood or plasma only flows of the same flow type and shear magnitude. Also, a preliminary mass spectrometry analysis of the hard protein corona on particles revealed unique proteins, mostly immunoglobulin subclasses/ subtypes, found in the protein corona on PLGA but not in the corona on PS particles when exposed to the same donor blood. It is likely that PS do not exhibit reduced adhesion in human blood flow due to the critical negative plasma proteins having a low affinity for these materials. This assertion that different material chemistry affects the type of adsorbed plasma proteins on particles of similar size and surface charge is in line with a previous report by others.

In the periphery, regulation of energetic metabolism involves several types of nuclear receptors. Among NRs, LXRs, activated by cholesterol metabolites, are known to be key regulators of lipid and cholesterol metabolism. The two related LXRs, LXRa and LXRb are part of the emerging significant newer drug targets within the NR family. A second type of NR, TRs, plays a major role in controlling energy metabolism. THs are known to regulate, at a transcriptional level, all the steps of cholesterol metabolism, and TRb1 is the main receptor isoform involved. Given the role played by these NR in metabolism, dysregulations of metabolic functions controlled by LXR/TRs can alter the homeostatic control circuits, contributing to the pathogenesis of many common metabolic diseases, such as obesity, insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, hyperlipidaemia, atherosclerosis, and gallbladder disease. Interactions between LXR and TR have been described in the periphery. These interactions are based on two major points: First, LXRs and TRs both use retinoid X receptors as common heterodimerization partner, a fact that can engender competition for RXR if quantities are limiting. Second, the consensus response elements for LXRs and TRs are very similar. However, so far no data are available on how such interactions affect regulations at the central level, whereas, it is well known that hypothalamus is considered as the central integrator of metabolic regulation. Consequently, the key players are the central controls of food intake, relayed by neural and gene networks in different hypothalamic nuclei. Indeed, in the context of thyroid hormone – induced gene regulation, our group has focused on hypothalamic interactions between different signalling pathways controlling metabolism. In particular, we showed that TH, through TRs, is directly involved in transcriptional regulation of melanocortin receptor type 4. Moreover, the need for a detailed study on the involvement of LXR in central metabolic pathways and control of energy homeostasis is underlined by the fact that it has Ibrutinib recently been shown that the central melanocortin pathway, particularly hypothalamic MC4R is involved in the control of hepatic cholesterol metabolism: in addition to facilitating hepatic cholesterol synthesis, the central melanocortin system influences cholesterol transport by modulating HDL cholesterol levels. These results lead to the hypothesis that LXR signalling, in the hypothalamus, may interact with this pathway. In the current study, we analysed, at the hypothalamic level, how LXR may interfere with transcriptional regulation induced by TRs. Using in vivo gene transfer we show that activation of LXR by its synthetic agonist GW3965 represses the transcriptional activity of two known TH target genes involved in the central control of metabolism, Trh and Mc4r promoters, and this only in euthyroid mice. This repression was restored by TH treatment in hypothyroid mice.