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Byline: Fei. Li, Yongpin. Dong, Chunya. Ni, Haidong. Kan, Shuxian. Yan Aim: Common indoor pollutants, as fine particulate matter (PM2.5), can damage people's health and cause skin allergies. However, it [...]

Myocardial fibrosis (MF) can cause heart remodeling and it is an independent risk factor for malignant arrhythmias, sudden cardiac death, and other malignant cardiovascular events. It is often characterized by myocardial interstitial collagen deposition and hyperproliferation of cardiac fibroblasts (CFs). The transforming growth factor-β1 (TGF-β1) is the most influential profibrogenic factor. Resveratrol (RSV) is an active polyphenol substance that inhibits myocardial fibrosis. The mechanism of RSV-mediated inhibition of the proliferation of CFs at the microRNA level is not fully understood. We used TGF-β1 to induce CFs proliferation to simulate the pathogenesis of myocardial fibrosis. Neonatal rat CFs were treated with TGF-β1 in the presence or absence of resveratrol. Cell proliferation was measured using the CCK-8 and EdU assay. Collagen secretion was measured using hydroxyproline kit. Further, qPCR analysis was performed to determine microRNA levels after TGF-β1 or resveratrol treatment. To identify the target gene for miR-17, miR-17 was overexpressed or silenced, and the mRNA and protein levels of Smad7 were assessed. The effects of miR-17 silencing or Smad7 overexpression on cell proliferation and collagen secretion were also examined. Resveratrol treatment significantly decreased the TGF-β1-induced CF proliferation and collagen secretion. Resveratrol also decreased the levels of miR-17, miR-34a, and miR-181a in TGF-β1-treated CFs. Overexpression of miR-17 decreased the Smad7 mRNA and protein levels while silencing miR-17 increased them. Additionally, silencing miR-17 or overexpressing Smad7 decreased the TGF-β1-induced CFs proliferation and collagen secretion. In conclusion, resveratrol inhibits TGF-β1-induced CFs proliferation and collagen secretion. This inhibitory effect of resveratrol is orchestrated by the downregulation of miR-17 and the regulation of Smad7. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Since miRNAs can play important roles in different cancer types, how to discover cancer related miRNAs is an important issue. In general, the miRNAs with differential expression is the focus of attention. However, some important cancer related miRNAs are not excavated by differential expression analysis. We take this type of miRNAs as 'dark matters' (DM-miRNA). It is our great interests to develop an algorithm to discover DM-miRNAs. Results: An effective method was developed to find DM-miRNAs. This method is mainly for mining potential DM-miRNAs by building basic miRNA-mRNA network (BMMN) and miRNA-lncRNA network (BMLN). The results indicate that miRNA-mRNA and miRNA-lncRNA interactions can be used as novel cancer biomarkers. Conclusions: The BMMN and BMLN can excavate the non-differentially expressed miRNAs which play an important role in the cancer. What's more, the edge biomarkers (miRNA-mRNA and miRNA-lncRNA interactions) contain more information than the node biomarkers. It will contribute to developing novel therapeutic candidates in cancers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: To evaluate the expression of programmed death 1 ligand 1 (PD-L1) in the cancer tissues and tumor-adjacent normal tissues of patients with invasive ductal carcinoma of the breast and to analyze the relationship between the expression of PD-L1 and the clinicopathological features of patients.Materials and Methods: This study included 112 cases of patients with invasive ductal carcinoma of breast who received surgical treatment from March 2012 to February 2016 in Xuzhou Cancer Hospital. The clinical materials of included patients were retrospectively analyzed. The immunohistochemical assay and real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assay were applied to examine the expression of mRNA and protein of PD-L1 in breast cancer specimens of 112 cases and paired tumor-adjacent tissue specimens of 57 cases. The relationship between PD-L1 protein expression and clinicopathological features of patients was analyzed.Results: PD-L1 protein was mainly expressed in the cytoplasm. The positive rate of PD-L1 expression in invasive ductal carcinoma was 19.6% (22/112), and the positive rate of PD-L1 expression of tumor-adjacent normal tissues was 3.5% (2/57), indicating that the positive rate of PD-L1 expression of cancerous tissues was significantly higher than that of in tumor-adjacent normal tissues (P < 0.05); the positive expression of PD-L1 was not related with the patients' age, menopause history, family history of breast cancer, tumor size, and location of the tumor (P > 0.05) while it was related with lymph node metastasis, the clinic staging, and histopathological grading (P < 0.05). Real-time PCR was applied to detect the mRNA expression of PD-L1 in breast-invasive ductal carcinoma with the mean ΔCt value of 7.79 ± 2.25. However, the mRNA expression of PD-L1 in normal tumor-adjacent tissues was of low expression with the mean ΔCt value of 12.37 ± 3.33. The difference was statistically significant (P< 0.05).Conclusion: The expression of PD-L1 in breast-invasive ductal carcinoma was significantly increased, and it was related to histological grading, clinical staging, and lymph node metastasis of breast cancer. PD-L1 may be a significant marker for the prognosis of breast cancer patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose: Although superoxide dismutase (SOD) and malondialdehyde (MDA) affect Delayed Onset Muscle Soreness (DOMS), their effects are unclear in rectus femoris muscles (RFM) of rats with different eccentric exercise programs and time points. The purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of the various eccentric exercise programs at different time points on the SOD mRNA expression and MDA using rat as the animal model. Methods: 248 male rats were randomly divided into 4 groups: control group (CTL, n = 8), once-only exercise group (OEG, n = 80), continuous exercise group (CEG, n = 80), and intermittent exercise group (IEG, n = 80). Each exercise group was divided into 10 subgroups that exercised 0.5 h, 6 h, 12 h, 24 h, 48 h, 72 h, 96 h, 120 h, 144 h, or 168 h. Rats were sacrificed and their SOD mRNA expression, and MDA concentrations of skeletal muscle tissue were measured. Results: The specimen in all eccentric exercise programs showed increased RFM SOD1 mRNA expression levels at 0.5 h (P<0.05), and decreased RFM SOD3 mRNA expression at 0.5 h (P<0.05). The continuous eccentric exercise (CE) significantly enhanced muscle SOD2 mRNA level at 0.5 h (P<0.05). After once-only eccentric exercise (OE), SOD1, SOD2, and SOD3 mRNA expression significantly increased at 96 h, whereas MDA concentrations decreased at 96 h. After CE, the correlation coefficients of SOD1, SOD2, SOD3 mRNA expression levels and MDA concentrations were −0.814, −0.763, −0.845 (all P<0.05) at 12 h. Conclusion: Regular eccentric exercise, especially CE could enhance SOD1 and SOD2 mRNA expression in acute stage and the SOD2 mRNA expression correlates to MDA concentration in vivo, which may improve the oxidative adaption ability of skeletal muscles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]