Forrest Hesselberg (creditarrow7)
Depressive disorder (DD) is the leading cause of disability worldwide and is the most prevalent mood disorder. Accumulative evidence from epidemiological studies has shown that DD is a risk factor for cancer. However, the role and molecular mechanism of DD in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) are still unknown. In this study, 30 mice were randomly divided into two groups the HCC group and the HCC-DD group. The DD mouse model of HCC was established by induction with reserpine every other day and with monthly doses of diethylnitrosamine (DEN). All of the molecular studies were based on primary cell culture, and the effects of DD on HCC cell proliferation and migration and cancer stem cell (CSC) self-renewal were determined by colony formation, wound healing, and sphere culture assays. We found that the CSC markers ABCG2 and CD133 were upregulated in HCC-DD primary cells compared with HCC primary cells. Moreover, HCC-DD primary cells were more aggressive in terms of metastasis and self-renewal than HCC primary cells. Further study revealed that DD promoted tumor growth and metastasis by activating the AKT signaling pathway followed by an increased ABCG2 expression. Taken together, our novel findings indicate that DD promotes proliferation, self-renewal, and metastasis by upregulating ABCG2 in the AKT pathway.The diagnosis, treatment and prognosis of sarcoma are mainly dependent on tissue biopsy, which is limited in its ability to provide a panoramic view into the dynamics of tumor progression. In addition, effective biomarkers to monitor the progression and therapeutic response of sarcoma are lacking. Liquid biopsy, a recent technological breakthrough, has gained great attention in the last few decades. Nucleic acids (such as DNA, mRNAs, microRNAs, and long non-coding RNAs) that are released from tumors circulate in the blood of cancer patients and can be evaluated through liquid biopsy. Circulating tumor nucleic acids reflect the intertumoral and intratumoral heterogeneity, and thus liquid biopsy provides a noninvasive strategy to examine these molecules compared with traditional tissue biopsy. Over the past decade, a great deal of information on the potential utilization of circulating tumor nucleic acids in sarcoma screening, prognosis and therapy efficacy monitoring has emerged. Several specific gene mutations in sarcoma can be detected in peripheral blood samples from patients and can be found in circulating tumor DNA to monitor sarcoma. In addition, circulating tumor non-coding RNA may also be a promising biomarker in sarcoma. In this review, we discuss the clinical application of circulating tumor nucleic acids as blood-borne biomarkers in sarcoma.Recent studies have revealed that cancer patients had a higher risk of having coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), compared to patients without cancer. selleck products The expression of angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2), the receptor of SARS-CoV-2, was aberrantly expressed in many tumors. In this study, by exploring the TCGA and GTEx public databases, we investigated ACE2 expression and its association with prognosis in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), the most susceptible caner type. We found that lung was one of the major organs with highly expressed ACE2. Furthermore, ACE2 expression was significantly elevated in lung adenocarcioma (LUAD) and lung squamous cell carcinoma (LUSC) compared to normal tissues. DNA methylation might be one possible mechanism leading to ACE2 upregulation. Despite that, the AEC2 expression was not statistically associated with disease-free survival (DFS) and overall survival (OS) for LUAD patients, and higher ACE2 expression was associated with prolonged DFS in LUSC patients. Taken together, we observed ACE2 was highly expressed in LUAD and LUSC despite the controversial role of ACE2 expression in predicting prognosis in these two common lung cancer types.Objective To in