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To explore the characteristics of breast ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) on real‐time grayscale contrast‐enhanced ultrasound (CEUS) imaging and the diagnostic value of CEUS in DCIS. A total of 127 histopathologically confirmed DCIS lesions and 124 fibroadenomas (FAs; controls) were subjected to conventional ultrasound and CEUS. Next, the CEUS findings of DCIS and FA lesions, including morphologic features and quantitative parameters, were analyzed. Binary logistic regression was used to identify the independent risk factors from DCIS and FA lesions detected by CEUS. Contrast‐enhanced ultrasound revealed significant differences between DCIS and FA. The wash‐in time, enhancement mode, enhancement intensity, blood perfusion defects, peripheral high enhancement, enhancement scope, intratumoral vessels and their courses and dilatation degree, and penetrating vessels on CEUS were identified as features correlated with DCIS (P< .05). Moreover, a multivariate logistic regression analysis was developed, and the area under receiver operating characteristic curve of each index was generated, including the wash‐in time, enhancement intensity, blood perfusion defects, enhancement scope, penetrating vessels, arrival time, and peak intensity (P< .05; area under the curve, >0.6). The contrast‐enhancement patterns and DCIS parameters appeared different from FA lesions, thus suggesting that CEUS can be very useful in distinguishing DCIS from FA lesions.

Pemphigus is a skin and mucosal membrane-targeting autoimmune bullous disease. Previous studies have shown that circulating anti-desmoglein1/3 antibodies are pathogenic and mediate blister formation. However, the role of infiltrating immune cells in lesional skin has not been fully investigated. In this study we showed that there existed a large number of B and T lymphocytes and plasma cells in the skin lesions by immunohistochemistry and immunofluorescence staining. In addition, a significantly increased number of Dsg1- and Dsg3-specific B cells could be identified by flow cytometric analysis or enzyme-linked immunospot technique (i.e., ELISPOT) assay. Furthermore, anti-Dsg1 and Dsg3 antibodies could be detected from the supernatant of in vitro cultures with isolated lymphocytes from lesional skin. We found that most T lymphocytes infiltrating pemphigus vulgaris lesions were CD4+T helper cells expressing IL-21 and IL-17a but not typical T follicular helper cells expressing CXCR5. Additionally, our microarray assay showed that the level of chemokine CCL19was significantly elevated, suggesting active T-/B-lymphocyte trafficking and aggregation in the pemphigus vulgaris lesions. Collectively, our results suggest a critical role of locally infiltrating lymphocytes in pemphigus pathogenesis.

The Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway dominates numerous cellular processes including cell proliferation, differentiation, and epithelial–mesenchymal transition, which play a crucial role in human cancer malignancies. Regulator of G-protein signaling 3 (RGS3) is a pivotal molecule involved in the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway, which is worthy of intensive research as a potential target in cancer treatment. In this study, we found that RGS3 is significantly upregulated in gastric cancer (GC) tumor samples compared with normal samples from the analysis of two independent GC mRNA microarray datasets in the NCBI public database. Further immunohistochemistry assay and western-blot experiments confirmed this finding on the basis of the results of our own 102 paired GC specimens and three GC cell lines. We found that a high expression of RGS3 is associated with advanced TNM stages and more aggressive malignant behaviors. In addition, the association of overexpression of RGS3 and poor overall survival and progression-free survival outcomes suggests that RGS3 has the potential to serve as a molecular therapy target for GC. Interestingly, our pathways analysis and the follow-up dual-luciferase reporter assay showed that there is a direct 3′-untranslated region binding site between RGS3 mRNA and microRNA-126, a GC inhibitor. On the basis of all the above evidences, our findings suggest that overexpressed RGS3 regulated by microRNA-126 through the post-transcriptional modulation is associated significantly with a poor prognosis of GC patients.

Diffusion kurtosis imaging may have the potential to serve not only as a feasible method for characterization of breast lesions, but also as an effective method for histologic grading and prediction of proliferative ability of breast cancer.

Actin-binding protein Anillin plays a pivotal role in regulating cytokinesis during the cell cycle, and involves in tumorigenesis and progress. However, the exact regulation mechanism of Anillin in human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) remains largely unknown. In this study, we examined and verified the anomalous high expression of Anillin in both HCC patients' specimens and HCC cell lines. High expression of Anillin is associated with dismal clinicopathologic features of HCC patients and poor prognosis. We conducted loss-of and gain-of function studies in HCC Hep3B cells. Anillin presented a significantly facilitating effect on cell proliferation in vitro and induced remarkable tumor growth in vivo. We found that the over-expression of Anillin was driven by a potential axis of miR-138/SOX4. Transcription factor SOX4 presented a high expression profile positive correlated with Anillin, and ChIP assay validated the interaction between SOX4 and the specific sequence of the promoter region of Anillin gene. While, we verified miR-138 as an upstream regulator of SOX4, which is abrogated in HCC cells and exerts degenerating effect on SOX4 mRNA. In our conclusion, Anillin facilitates the cell proliferation and enhances tumor growth of HCC, and is modulated by miR-138/SOX4 axis which regulates the transcriptional activity of Anillin. Findings above demonstrate us a probable axis for HCC diagnosis and treatment.