Month: November 2020

In fact, hepatocytes contain abundant ER that is essential for protein metabolism and stress signaling. Hepatic cells cope with ER stress by an adaptive or protective response, termed unfolded protein response. UPR includes both the enhancement of protein folding and degrading in the ER and the down-regulation of overall protein synthesis. When the UPR to ER stress is insufficient, the ER stress response unleashes pathological consequences, including hepatic fat accumulation, inflammation and cell death, which can lead to the liver disease or worsen other causes-induced liver diseases. Consistent with these early observations, here we demonstrated the induction of ER stress in the liver of diabetic mice, shown by increased CHOP and caspase-12 cleavage, which was worsened in the diabetic mice with Zn deficiency. These data suggest that either diabetes or Zn RAD001 deficiency induces the hepatic ER stressrelated cell death and two pathogeneses together caused a synergetic effect on the ER stress and cell death. There were several previous studies that have demonstrated the negative regulation of Nrf2 by Fyn via its forcing Nrf2 exportation from nucleus to cytosol where Nrf2 binds to Keap1 for its degradation. Since GSK-3b controls Fyn translocation into nucleus, the inactivation of GSK-3b by its phosphorylation results in a less nuclear accumulation of Fyn. Zn has been reported to negatively regulate Akt negative regulators PTP1B and PTEN. Therefore, we assume that the exacerbation of hepatic injury by Zn deficiency may be because Zn deficiency loses its inhibition of PTP1B and PTEN, leading to the inhibition by these two negative regulators of Akt phosphorylation and consequently down-regulation of GSK-3b phosphorylation, which will increase Fyn nuclear accumulation to export Nrf2 into cytosol, as shown in Fig. 8. TRB3 is a novel ER stress-inducible protein. Here we showed the increases in CHOP expression and caspase-12 activation in the liver of Zn deficiency and diabetes groups at a similar level but a synergistic increase in the liver of diabetes with Zn deficiency. Similarly there was also a similar level of increase of TRB3 expression in the liver of Zn deficiency and diabetes alone groups, but there was a synergistic increase of TRB3 expression in the liver of Diabetes/TPEN group. Therefore, we assume that due to down-regulation of Nrf2 function, less transcriptional expression of multiple antioxidants would result in a further increase in diabetic oxidative stress, which directly or indirectly via ER stress up-regulates TRB3 that directly inhibits Akt function, as illustrated in Fig. 8. In summary, we have explored here the effect of Zn deficiency on diabetic liver injury in the type 1 diabetes mouse model. We found that Zn deficiency exacerbated diabetes-induced hepatic oxidative damage, inflammation, and cell death, through downregulation of Nrf2 expression and transcription. In respect that patients with diabetes often have some levels of Zn deficiency that may be partially due to increased urinary Zn excretion and partially due to restriction of certain food intakes, and about 12% of Americans do not consume the average requirement for Zn so that they could be at risk for marginal Zn deficiency, we would like to draw the attention of patients with diabetes that proper intake of Zn may be important for the prevention of their diabetic complications, including diabetic liver injury. Gastric cancer is the fourth most common cancer worldwide and more than 90% of gastric cancers are adenocarcinomas. Recently, in Japan, effective surgical or endoscopic treatments, resulting in a relatively better prognosis.

In our system, increased production of IL-10 in lymph nodes coincides with elevated mRNA levels of SOCS1 and decreased levels of IL6. It is also known that IL-6 in the presence of TGF-b drives ROR-ct expression in naive T cells to Th17 cells, while the absence of IL-6 induces FoxP3 expression and expansion of T regulatory cells. At the studied time points, no differences in the number of T regulatory cells or serum levels of IL-17 could be detected, suggesting that this mechanism is less likely. The frequency of B cells is decreased both locally in lymph nodes and systemically in spleen of LNT-IL-10 mice compared with controls. This effect might be attributed mainly to decreased IL-6 levels as the cytokine originally was identified as a B-cell differentiation factor and plays an important role in the development of antibody-producing plasma cells. Beside the fact that fewer B cells can lead to lower levels of anti-CII IgG antibodies, the beneficial effects of a reduced B cell population is well described in the outcome of human RA by the use of B cell depleting anti-CD20 antibodies. Our study suggests that inflammation-dependent IL-10 production causing locally increased levels of IL-10, increased SOCS1 mRNA and a decrease in systemic IL-6 levels ameliorate the outcome of CIA in mice. However, the concept needs to be tested in human RA, as the role of IL-10 in RA patients is far from clarified: RA patients have significantly elevated levels of IL-10 in synovial fluid while the expression of IL-10 receptors are reduced in synovial tissue compared with osteoarthritic controls, and treatment with systemic recombinant IL-10 in human RA patients has so far not shown any convincing results. Although these findings appear disappointing they do not contradict our data. Rather, they suggest that the anti-arthritogenic effect might be dependent on a requirement for localised rather than systemic IL-10 treatment. The involvement of ETS genes in cancer was first demonstrated by the presence of the oncogene v-ets as part of the gag-myb-ets transforming fusion protein of an avian retrovirus, E26. Their importance in human carcinogenesis is supported by the observations that ETS genes are implicated in chromosomal translocations, giving rise to fusion proteins that play an important role in the genesis of several hematological malignances, soft tissue tumors and carcinomas. The ETS family of transcription factors is one of the largest families of transcription regulators, and plays an important role in diverse MK-1775 biological processes, including cell proliferation, apoptosis, differentiation, lymphoid and myeloid cell development, angiogenesis and invasiveness. It is characterized by an 85 amino acidic, highly conserved, DNA binding domain, which displays sequence specific binding to purine-rich DNA sequences containing a 59-GGAA/T-39 core sequence. The Ewing’s sarcoma family of tumors serves as a paradigm for the entire class of ETS-related tumors, since more than 99% of the cases harbor translocations involving ETS genes and EWSR1. In 85% of the cases, the ESFT harbors a t chromosomal translocation, resulting in a fusion of the amino terminus of the EWSR1 gene to the carboxyl terminus of FLI1. Some of them may turn out to be more amenable to targeted therapy than the chimeric/truncated transcription factors themselves. Whereas several target genes relevant for ESFT have been uncovered, the search for the downstream effectors of aberrant ETS transcription factors in PCa is still in its infancy. The major ETS genes involved in rearrangements in ESFT and PCa, FLI1 and ERG, respectively, belong to the same subfamily.

The immunomodulatory polysaccharide A, produced by Bacteroides fragilis, induces Foxp3+ IL-10-producing T regulatory cells. Lathrop et al. recently demonstrated that the peripheral T cell population, besides the thymic self/nonself discrimination instructions, further is educated by the colonic microbiota. Recently, the microbiota has also been shown to influence immune responses to LY2157299 TGF-beta inhibitor infections as well as the development of noninfectious conditions. The response towards respiratory tract influenza is altered in antibiotic treated animals suggesting the importance of the microbiota in directing the immune responses at other sites than the gut. In addition, the microbiota also seems to influence development of autoimmune disease and inflammatory bowel disease in mice. Much less is known about how the microbiota influences the human immune system. Although a failure in tolerating the intestinal bacteria is suggested in the pathogenesis of IBD, and an altered early-life colonization pattern associates with the development of allergic diseases, the underlying mechanisms of microbiota-mediated immune modulation in humans need to be further investigated. Early colonization with bifidobacteria has been associated with increased secretory IgA in saliva whereas lactobacilli and bifidobacteria colonization associates with lower cytokine responses and increased Foxp3 expression following in vitro allergen stimulation. Early Bacteroides fragilis colonization seems to associate with immune function also in humans. Infants colonized with Bacteroides fragilis early in life had more IgA-producing cells in infancy, spontaneous IFN-c production and reduced pro-inflammatory responses following LPS stimulation early in life compared to non-colonized infants. In addition, stimulating human immune cells in vitro with bacterial species have demonstrated species-specific immunostimulatory capacities. We have previously reported that infants colonized with lactobacilli rhamnosus, L. paracasei, L. casei) and Bifidobacterium bifidum early in life were significantly less often allergic at five years of age, whereas the opposite tendency was seen for Staphylococcus aureus colonization. Therefore, we wanted to investigate if early-life colonization with these species of bacteria, influences immune responses during childhood. Due to the association between the gut microbiota and T cell development/maturation we choose to stimulate peripheral blood mononuclear cells with the general T cell stimuli phytohaemagglutinin and assessed IFN-c and IL-4 as these cytokines are signature cytokines favoring cell mediated and humoral immunity, respectively, whereas IL-10 was investigated due to its potentially regulatory function. Further, we performed in vitro stimulations of peripheral-blood mononuclear cells with bacterial supernatants to investigate how these species directly induce IL-42, IL-102 and IFN-c production in CD4+ T cells. Studies of germ free and gnotobiotic mice have uncovered the impact of the microbiota on the maturation of both innate and adaptive immune branches of the system. In humans, the role of the microbiota for immune maturation is not as clear. However, there are reports of associations between microbiota composition and immune-mediated disease, although the underlying mechanisms behind these associations are still largely unknown. Based on the hypothesis that the early-life gut microbiota composition influences infant immune maturation, we have investigated early gut bacterial species in relation to numbers of cytokine-secreting cells at two years of age. We clearly demonstrate that infant gut colonization with certain bacterial species associates with the number of cytokine-secreting cells in a speciesspecific manner later in childhood.

With their counterparts at comparable stages of development in vivo and putative paracrine factors secreted by the reproductive tract were shown to enhance early embryonic development. Recent progress in sequential culture media allowed extended culture of human embryos to the blastocyst-stage and blastocyst transfer is effective in selecting high-quality embryos for successful pregnancy, leading to the birth of several million IVF babies. However, the efficiency of human blastocyst development in vitro remains to be improved. Several studies using surplus human material suggested the promotion of blastocyst development in vitro when culture media were supplemented with growth factors, including EGF, IGF-I, BDNF, and granulocyte macrophage colony-stimulating factor. Because most routine human embryo cultures do not contain growth factors, we hypothesized that inclusion of autocrine/paracrine growth factors in the culture media could improve early embryonic development. We investigated the expression of key Crizotinib ligand-receptor pairs in cleavage-stage human embryos derived from tri-pronuclear zygotes and specific ligands in human uterine endometrium. We individually cultured abnormally fertilized zygotes and normally fertilized day 3 embryos from IVF programs in micro-drops using routine serum-free culture media supplemented with a group of key growth factors to improve embryo development. We examined if these growth factors could improve blastocyst outgrowth in vitro using normally fertilized hatching blastocysts. Because the development of reconstructed embryos after SCNT is sub-optimal, we also tested if supplementation of culture media with key growth factors could increase the development of SCNT-derived embryos. Following culturing individual human embryos in chemically defined serum-free media, we demonstrated the ability of key autocrine/paracrine growth factors to promote early embryonic development and implantation. Treatment with key growth factors enhanced the development of abnormal tri-pronuclear zygotes, normally fertilized human embryos, and reconstructed embryos following SCNT. The key growth factors not only stimulated embryo growth but also increased the proportion of morphologically good blastocysts, suggesting improvement of embryo quality. Although the facilitatory effects of individual growth factors on human embryo development have been reported, the present use of multiple growth factors likely exerts overlapping and redundant actions to allow optimal early embryo development. Culturing of individual embryos further minimizes cross-interaction of embryos and provides the basis to monitor the functions of single high quality embryos for transfer. Demonstration of the facilitatory effects of key growth factors to promote blastocyst outgrowth further provides future opportunity to include them in embryo transfer media to improve implantation success. Our immunofluorescence staining and real-time RT-qPCR analyses confirmed the expression of key ligand-receptor pairs in human early embryos, underscoring their importance as autocrine/paracrine factors. For each ligand-receptor pairs, ligand antigens were found in the cytoplasm of blastomeres whereas the receptor antigens were found in the plasma membrane, suggesting the secretion of these paracrine/autocrine ligands to act on membrane receptors in an autocrine/paracrine manner. As a 3- day-old human embryo enters the uterus at the morula stage, further development could also be regulated by paracrine factors secreted by the endometrium. Our RT-PCR and immunostaining studies confirmed the expression of these key growth factors in the human endometrium, suggesting their paracrine roles in support of embryo growth after the morula stage.

We also confirmed that TGFBR2 expression is reduced in PCa, which is compatible with the tumor suppressor role of TGFBR2 in PCa cells described by others, but promoter methylation does not seem to be involved. On the other hand, we found that NR0B1 was poorly expressed in PCa and in NPT, so our data do not support the previously reported immunoreactivity of DAX1 in a significant proportion of PCa. Based on our microarray findings of differential expression of ECRG4, LDOC1, HIST1H4L and KCNN2 between PCa harboring ERG rearrangements and those without ETS fusions, we decided to validate these data in an independent series of tumors. Among the five genes downregulated in PCa ERG+, we choose ECRG4 and LDOC1 for further study based on their tumor suppressor activity in other cancer models. We also evaluated the expression of these genes in ESFT and ARMS in order to verify if there was any significant difference in their expression that might be attributable to EWSR1-ETS rearrangements. We here report for the first time that expression of both ECRG4 and LDOC1 is significantly decreased in PCa when compared to NPT. However, this was independent of the ETS status, contrarily to our initial microarray data suggesting a specific underexpression in PCa with ERG fusion genes. Consistent with a recent study that has associated CpG island hypermethylation of ECRG4 with recurrence in prostate carcinoma, our MSP analysis showed a significantly higher methylation frequency in PCa comparing with NPT, thus representing a mechanism of gene silencing that might be involved in all molecular subgroups of PCa. In LNCaP and 22Rv1 cell lines, however, DAC treatment was not sufficient to allow de novo ECRG4 expression, thus suggesting that other regulatory mechanisms may act in ECRG4 underexpression. The mechanism of LDOC1 downregulation is currently unknown, but because we did not find aberrant promoter methylation at this locus, other epigenetic or genetic alterations are probably causally involved. Finally, although the chimeric EWSR1-FLI1 protein has been found to bind the promoter of both LDOC1 and ECRG4 in vitro, we here show that their expression is not significantly different between ESFT and ARMS, thus suggesting that either the expression of these genes is not regulated by that chimeric protein in ESFT or that a different regulatory mechanism in ARMS is regulating the expression of LDOC1 and ECRG4 to similar levels. Our microarray findings of differential expression of HIST1H4L and KCNN2 in different molecular subsets of PCa were confirmed by qRT-PCR in an independent series. HIST1H4L is a gene that encodes a histone, which is a basic nuclear protein responsible for the nucleosome structure of the chromosomal fiber in eukaryotes. We here show for the first time that HIST1H4L expression is specifically and significantly increased in PCa harboring ERG fusion genes, both when compared to other PCa molecular subtypes and with NPT. These findings indicate that HIST1H4L is a potential target of ERG fusion genes, as also illustrated by our demonstration of direct binding of ERG to the HIST1H4L promoter, but the mechanism whereby it is involved in prostate carcinogenesis is still unknown. KCNN2 codes for a small conductance Ca2+ -activated potassium channel involved in the regulation of the neuronal excitability, and, to our knowledge, we here show for the first time that this gene is overexpressed in PCa harboring ERG rearrangements when compared to the other subtypes of PCa and to NPT. On the other hand, KCNN2 was underexpressed in both PCa with other ETS rearrangements and in those without ETS rearrangements when compared to NPT. These data suggest that KCNN2 regulation may be mediated by the aberrant ERG transcription XL880 factor.