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Acute leukemia is the most common pediatric cancer. In most cases, this disease results from the malignant transformation of either the B-cell (B-ALL) or, less frequently, T-cell progenitors (T-ALL). Recently, a marked overexpression of KCTD15, a member of the emerging class of the potassium (K) channel tetramerization domain-containing proteins (KCTDs) has been detected in both patients and continuous cell lines as in vitro model systems. Because there is growing evidence of the key, yet diversified, roles played by KCTDs in cancers, we here report an exhaustive analysis of their expression profiles in both B-ALL and T-ALL patients. Although for most KCTDs, no significant alterations were found in these pathological states, for some members of the family, significant up- and down-regulations were detected in comparison with the values found in healthy subjects in the transcriptome analysis. Among these, particularly relevant is the upregulation of the closely related KCTD1 and KCTD15 in T-ALL patients. Interestingly, KCTD1 is barely expressed in both unaffected controls and B-ALL patients. Therefore, not only does this analysis represent the first study in which the dysregulation of all KCTDs is simultaneously evaluated in specific pathological contexts, but it also provides a promising T-ALL biomarker that could be suitable for clinical applications.

From December 2019, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection has spread rapidly, leading to a global pandemic. Little is known about possible relationships between SARS-CoV-2 and other viruses in the respiratory system affecting patient prognosis and outcomes. This study aims to characterize respiratory virome profiles in association with SARS-CoV-2 infection and disease severity, through the analysis in 89 nasopharyngeal swabs collected in a patient's cohort from the Campania region (Southern Italy). Results show coinfections with viral species belonging to Coronaviridae, Retroviridae, Herpesviridae, Poxviridae, Pneumoviridae, Pandoraviridae, and Anelloviridae families and only 2% of the cases (2/89) identified respiratory viruses.

Simple Summary The molecular interplay between long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) and cancer metabolic reprogramming enables malignant cells to adjust metabolic reactions and nutrient uptake, supporting tumor growth and dissemination. Here, we summarize the current background on lncRNA-driven alterations of cell metabolic processes, with a particular emphasis on hypoxia-inducible pathways, glycolytic process, oxidative phosphorylation, lipid anabolic and catabolic reactions, amino acid metabolism and signal transduction pathways, with the main aim of elucidating the complex network of interactions between metabolism and lncRNA expression and activity. Indeed, due to their pleiotropic roles in cell physiology and cancer development and progression, lncRNAs are currently guarded as promising diagnostic and prognostic biomarkers and therapeutic targets, providing a novel approach for the early diagnosis and personalized therapy of multiple neoplasms. Abstract Metabolic reprogramming is a well described hallmark of cancer. Oncogenic stimuli and the microenvironment shape the metabolic phenotype of cancer cells, causing pathological modifications of carbohydrate, amino acid and lipid metabolism that support the uncontrolled growth and proliferation of cancer cells. Conversely, metabolic alterations in cancer can drive changes in genetic programs affecting cell proliferation and differentiation. In recent years, the role of non-coding RNAs in metabolic reprogramming in cancer has been extensively studied. Here, we review this topic, with a focus on glucose, glutamine, and lipid metabolism and point to some evidence that metabolic alterations occurring in cancer can drive changes in non-coding RNA expression, thus adding an additional level of complexity in the relationship between metabolism and genetic programs in cancer cells.

Estrogen receptors (ERα and ERβ) are ligand-activated transcription factors that play different roles in gene regulation and show both overlapping and specific tissue distribution patterns. ERβ, contrary to the oncogenic ERα, has been shown to act as an oncosuppressor in several instances. However, while the tumor-promoting actions of ERα are well-known, the exact role of ERβ in carcinogenesis and tumor progression is not yet fully understood. Indeed, to date, highly variable and even opposite effects have been ascribed to ERβ in cancer, including for example both proliferative and growth-inhibitory actions. Recently ERβ has been proposed as a potential target for cancer therapy, since it is expressed in a variety of breast cancers (BCs), including triple-negative ones (TNBCs). Because of the dependence of TNBCs on active cellular signaling, numerous studies have attempted to unravel the mechanism(s) behind ERβ-regulated gene expression programs but the scenario has not been fully revealed. We comprehensively reviewed the current state of knowledge concerning ERβ role in TNBC biology, focusing on the different signaling pathways and cellular processes regulated by this transcription factor, as they could be useful in identifying new diagnostic and therapeutic approaches for TNBC.

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is a highly heterogeneous disease, representing the most aggressive breast cancer (BC) subtype with limited treatment options due to a lack of estrogen receptor alpha (ER&alpha, ), progesterone receptor (PR), and Erb-B2 receptor tyrosine kinase 2 (HER2/neu) expression. Estrogen receptor beta (ER&beta, ) is present in a fraction of TNBC patients, where its expression correlates with improved patient outcomes, supported by the fact that it exerts oncosuppressive effects in TNBC cell models in vitro. ER&beta, is involved in microRNA-mediated regulation of gene expression in hormone-responsive BC cells and could mediate its actions through small noncoding RNAs (sncRNAs) in TNBCs also. To verify this possibility, smallRNA sequencing was performed on three ER&beta, expressing cell lines from different TNBC molecular subtypes. Several sncRNAs resulted modulated by ER&beta, with a subset being regulated in a tumor subtype-independent manner. Interestingly, sncRNA profiling of 12 ER&beta, +and 32 ER&beta, &minus, primary TNBC biopsies identified 7 microRNAs, 1 PIWI-interacting RNA (piRNA), and 1 transfer RNA (tRNA) differentially expressed in ER&beta, + compared to ER&beta, tumors and cell lines. Among them, miR-181a-5p was found to be overexpressed in ER&beta, + tumors and predicted target key components of the cholesterol biosynthesis pathway previously found to be inhibited by ER&beta, in TNBC cells.

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is characterized by poor response to therapy and low overall patient survival. Recently, Estrogen Receptor beta (ERβ) has been found to be expressed in a fraction of TNBCs where, because of its oncosuppressive actions on the genome, it represents a potential therapeutic target, provided a better understanding of its actions in these tumors becomes available. To this end, the cell lines Hs 578T, MDA-MB-468 and HCC1806, representing the claudin-low, basal-like 1 and 2 TNBC molecular subtypes respectively, were engineered to express ERβ under the control of a Tetracycline-inducible promoter and used to investigate the effects of this transcription factor on gene activity. The antiproliferative effects of ERβ in these cells were confirmed by multiple functional approaches, including transcriptome profiling and global mapping of receptor binding sites in the genome, that revealed direct negative regulation by ERβ of genes, encoding for key components of cellular pathways associated to TNBC aggressiveness representing novel therapeutic targets such as angiogenesis, invasion, metastasis and cholesterol biosynthesis. Supporting these results, interaction proteomics by immunoprecipitation coupled to nano LC-MS/MS mass spectrometry revealed ERβ association with several potential nuclear protein partners, including key components of regulatory complexes known to control chromatin remodeling, transcriptional and post-transcriptional gene regulation and RNA splicing. Among these, ERβ association with the Polycomb Repressor Complexes 1 and 2 (PRC1/2), known for their central role in gene regulation in cancer cells, was confirmed in all three TNBC subtypes investigated, suggesting its occurrence independently from the cellular context. These results demonstrate a significant impact of ERβ in TNBC genome activity mediated by its cooperation with regulatory multiprotein chromatin remodeling complexes, providing novel ground to devise new strategies for the treatment of these diseases based on ligands affecting the activity of this nuclear receptor or some of its protein partners.

This paper proposes a fingerprinting-based device Free Passive localization system based on the use of the LTE signal and it is robust to environment changes. The proposed methodology uses as fingerprints descriptors calculated on the CSI vectors rather than directly CSI vectors. The paper shows the performance of the proposed methods also assuming that the monitored environment might be different from the one characterized during the training phase as some equipment may be moved. Moreover, the paper compares the proposed method with signal fingerprinting approaches based on RSSI or direct CSI vectors. Experimental results, which consider one single LTE receiver in the monitored room, show the effectiveness of the proposed solution.

Estrogen Receptor alpha (ERα) is a ligand-inducible transcription factor that mediates estrogen signaling in hormone-responsive cells, where it controls key cellular functions by assembling in gene-regulatory multiprotein complexes. For this reason, interaction proteomics has been shown to represent a useful tool to investigate the molecular mechanisms underlying ERα action in target cells. RNAs have emerged as bridging molecules, involved in both assembly and activity of transcription regulatory protein complexes. By applying Tandem Affinity Purification (TAP) coupled to mass spectrometry (MS) before and after RNase digestion in vitro, we generated a dataset of nuclear ERα molecular partners whose association with the receptor involves RNAs. These data provide a useful resource to elucidate the combined role of nuclear RNAs and the proteins identified here in ERα signaling to the genome in breast cancer and other cell types., Design Type(s)parallel group design • protein and RNA interaction identification objective • cell type comparison designMeasurement Type(s)RNA-Protein Interaction • protein-protein interaction detectionTechnology Type(s)mass spectrometryFactor Type(s)experimental condition • biological replicateSample Characteristic(s)MCF7 cell Machine-accessible metadata file describing the reported data (ISA-Tab format)

This paper shows the feasibility of an LTE signal fingerprinting Device Free Passive localization system. The experimental setup considers one single LTE receiver in the monitored room. The paper shows that when ambient signals such as LTE are used, the use of RSSI as fingerprint provides very poor performance. CSI-based approaches demonstrate much better performance. Moreover, the system using CSI shape and statistical descriptors rather than direct CSI vectors is characterized by more stable performance also when the room configuration is changed (i.e., the furniture is moved).

Ectopic pregnancy (EP) is the implantation of an embryo outside the endometrial cavity of the uterus. Signs and symptoms of EP may arise between the 6th and the 8th week of gestation and include vaginal bleeding, lower abdominal and pelvic pain. Frequently EPs implant in the fallopian tubes. A rare EP is the interstitial pregnancy, a life-threatening condition being responsible for nearly 20% of all deaths caused by EPs. Because of its unique location, the diagnosis is difficult and based on signs and specific criteria together with measuring of serum β-hCG. Usually, EP is treated by surgical approach, which is associated with increased morbidity, decreased fertility and increased likelihood of hysterectomy and uterine rupture in a subsequent pregnancy. Early diagnosis is crucial to life saving and allowing alternative therapeutic interventions such as pharmacological treatments. Methotrexate (MTX) represents the mainstay therapy. There is no standard care for the interstitial pregnancy for what concerns either surgical or pharmacological approaches. We reported a case of a 36-year-old woman admitted to the Hospital of Salerno-Italy with a value of serum β-hCG of 35,993 IU/L. Transvaginal ultrasonography revealed an empty uterine cavity and a mass of 35.7 mm in diameter characterized by a hypoechoic central area. The patient was in stable haemodynamic condition and no haematologic, renal and hepatic impairments were recorded. Despite the high serum β-hCG levels, a pharmacological approach was preferred to a surgical one. The patient was treated with intramuscular administration of MTX in daily dose of 1 mg/Kg alternated with 0.1 mg/kg folinic acid for 5 days. The patient remained hospitalized for 20 days and no side effects were reported. The decrease of the serum β-hCG was monitored and more than 15% reduction was detected between the 4th and the 7th day after the beginning of the treatment. The serum β-hCG became undetectable 35 days after. A multidosing intramuscular administration of MTX was effective and safe even in the presence of very high serum β-hCG levels. Together with similar cases reported in literature, the present results can contribute to improve the decision making in the treatment of the interstitial pregnancy.

This paper investigates the possibility to use Channel State Information (CSI) extracted from Long Term Evolution (LTE) signals for signal fingerprinting localization. Being the first work in this direction, several types of signal fingerprinting-based approaches have been compared (e.g., CSI-based vs RSSI-based, statistic vs deterministic matching rule). In particular, the paper proposes a novel CSI-based signal fingerprinting that uses as fingerprint not directly the vector of channel gains per subcarrier, but rather some features extracted from these vectors. This method would greatly reduce the memory requirement of the database as well as the computational complexity of the matching phase. Experimental results, shown for both indoor and outdoor environments, confirm the effectiveness of the proposed method and also provide interesting insights on the use of LTE signal fingerprinting based on CSI.