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Background: Gliomas are highly refractory intracranial cancers characterized by genetic and transcriptional heterogeneity. However, therapeutic options are limited. In the last years, copper‐induced cell death is becoming a prospective treatment strategy for gliomas and other solid tumors, but copper metabolism‐related genes associated with cancer development remain unclear. Methods: We first collected gene expression data from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) to identify significantly differentially expressed copper metabolism‐related genes in gliomas. Using these genes, we performed COX regression and Least Absolute Shrinkage and Selection Operator (LASSO) regression to construct the prognostic model. The prognostic value of the model was further validated by CGGA testing set. Subsequently, functional analyses were carried out, including gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA), immune infiltration analysis, and mutation analysis. Finally, the expression levels of these genes were verified by immunohistochemical analysis. Results: The prognostic model consisted of 7 genes: CDK1, LOXL2, LOXL3, NFE2L2, SLC31A1, SUMF1 and FDX1. According to this prognosis model, glioma patients could be split into the high‐risk group or low‐risk group, and the low‐risk group showed significantly better prognostic survival (p < 0.001). Moreover, the high‐risk group had higher levels of immune cell infiltration, immune checkpoint genes expression, and higher tumor mutational burden (TMB), which indicates that they might benefit more from immunotherapy. Finally, we confirmed the expression level of FDX1, SUMF1, and SLC31A1 protein as significantly different in glioblastoma, lower‐grade glioma, and non‐tumor brain tissues by immunohistochemical analysis, and the high expression of FDX1 and SLC31A1 protein was related to poor survival in glioma patients. Conclusions: Our study could contribute to the prognosis prediction and decision‐making in patients with gliomas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study aimed to investigate the therapeutic effects of the Chinese herbal medicine Yin Zhi Huang soup (YZS) in an experimental autoimmune prostatitis (EAP) rat model. In total, 48 rats were randomly divided into the following four groups (n=12/group): saline group, pathological model group, Qianlietai group, and YZS group. We determined the average wet weight of the prostate tissue, the ratio of the wet weight of the prostate tissue to body weight, tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-α) levels in the blood serum, the expression of inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) in the rats’ prostate tissues, and the pathological changes in the prostate tissue using light microscopy. YZS reduced the rats’ prostate wet weight, the ratio of the prostate wet weight to body weight, and TNF-α levels in the blood serum and inhibited the expression of iNOS in the rats’ prostate tissues (P<0.05). Following YZS treatment, the pathological changes in the rats’ prostates were improved compared with those in the model group (P<0.05). Furthermore, YZS treatment reduced inflammatory changes in the prostate tissue. It also significantly suppressed proinflammatory cytokines, such as TNF-α, and chemokines, such as iNOS, in the rat model of EAP. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the DNA microarray research field, the increasing sample size and feature dimension of the gene expression data prompt the development of an efficient and robust feature selection algorithm for gene expression data classification. In this study, we propose a hybrid feature selection algorithm that combines the mutual information maximization (MIM) and the adaptive genetic algorithm (AGA). Experimental results show that the proposing MIMAGA-Selection method significantly reduces the dimension of gene expression data and removes the redundancies for classification. The reduced gene expression dataset provides highest classification accuracy compared to conventional feature selection algorithms. We also apply four different classifiers to the reduced dataset to demonstrate the robustness of the proposed MIMAGA-Selection algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

HPV-16 long control region (LCR) has been shown to be the most variable region of the HPV-16 genome and may play important roles in viral persistence and the development of cervical cancer. This study aimed to assess the risk of HPV-16 LCR variants for cervical cancer in women of Southwest China. 2146 cervical scrapings of volunteer outpatients and 74 cervical cancer tissues were screened.14 entire HPV-16 LCRs from asymptomatic carriers and 34 entire HPV-16 LCRs from cervical cancer patients were successfully amplified and sequenced to align to others described. 58 different point mutations were detected in 54 nucleotide sites of HPV-16 LCR. G7193T and G7521A variants, accounting for 100% of the infections, were predicted to locate at the binding site for FOXA1 and SOX9, respectively. A7730C variant which showed a high mutation frequency in cervical cancer was predicted to be a binding site for the cellular transcription factor PHOX2A. In addition, phylogenetic analysis displayed a high prevalence of A lineage in HPV-16 LCR in this Southwest China population. This study may help understanding of the intrinsic geographical relatedness and the correlations between LCR mutations and the development of carcinogenic lesions in Southwest China population. And it provides useful data for the further study of the biological function of HPV-16 LCR variants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small, non-coding RNAs that are critical regulators of various diseases. MicroRNA-20a (miR-20a) has previously significantly altered in a range of cancers. In this study, we detected the relationship between miR-20a and the development of cervical cancer by qRT-PCR, we found that the expression level of miR-20a was significantly higher in cervical cancer patients than in normal controls, the aberrant expression of miR-20a was correlated with lymph node metastasis, histological grade and tumor diameter. Then we successfully established the stable anti-miR-20a cervical cancer cell lines by lentivirus. Inhibited miR-20a prevented tumor progression by modulating cell cycle, apoptosis, and metastasis in vitro and in vivo. TIMP2 and ATG7 were proved to be direct targets of miR-20a, using luciferase assay and western blot. These results indicate that miR-20a suppresses the proliferation, migration and invasion of cervical cancer cell through targeting ATG7 and TIMP2. Our results support the involvement of miR-20a in cervical tumorigenesis, especially lymph node metastasis. We propose that miRNAs might be used as therapeutic agent for cervical cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

TNF-alpha plays an important role in the development of secondary lymphoid tissues. Earlier studies showed that fibroblastic reticular cells express TNF-alpha receptor, suggesting that TNF-alpha may affect the development of FRCs. To test this, we analyzed the development and function of FRCs in wild-type or TNF-alpha knockout mice. We found that GP38 expression was down-regulated in the spleen of TNF-alpha knockout mice. Chemokines, mainly secreted by GP38 + FRCs, were also down-regulated. Additionally, we found that absence of TNF-alpha decreased the homing ability to direct T cells to the spleen. However, absence of TNF-alpha did not affect the development of lymph nodes FRCs. These data reveal that TNF-alpha plays an important role in the development of spleen FRCs. Absence of TNF-alpha could cause abnormality of spleen FRCs, thereby weakening the homing ability of T cells to localize to the spleen T cell zone. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To elucidate the differences in microRNAs during dengue virus infection between Vero cell-adapted strain (DENV-2-Vero) and its source, the clinical C6/36 isolated strain (DENV-2-C6/36), a comparison analysis was performed in Vero cells by high throughput sequencing. The results showed that the expression of 16 known and 3 novel miRNAs exhibited marked differences. 5 known miRNAs were up-regulated in DENV-2-C6/36 group, while 11 known microRNAs were down-regulated in DENV-2-Vero group. The GO enrichment and KEGG pathway analysis showed that there was a distinct difference in regulating viral replication between two strains. In DENV-2-Vero infection group, significantly enriched GO terms included virion attachment to host cells, viral structural protein/genome processing and packaging. Meanwhile, the regulation of cell death and apoptosis between two groups were different in the early stage of infection. KEGG enrichment analysis showed that DENV-2-C6/36 infection induced more intense regulation of immune-related pathways, including Fc gamma R-mediated phagocytosis, etc. DENV-2-Vero infection could partially alleviate the immune defense of Vero cells compared with DENV-2-C6/36. The results indicated that the distinct microRNA changes induced by two DENV-2 strains may be partly related to their infective abilities. Our data provide useful insights that help elucidate the host-pathogen interactions following DENV infection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]