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Our previous study demonstrated that type II cGMP-dependent protein kinase (PKG II) inhibited epidermal growth factor (EGF) induced tyrosine phosphorylation/activation of the EGF receptor (EGFR). This paper was designed to investigate the mechanism of the inhibition of PKG II on EGFR activation. Gastric cancer cells HGC-27 and AGS were infected with an adenoviral vector encoding the cDNA of PKG II (Ad-PKG II) to overexpress PKG II and treated with 8-(4-chlorophenylthio) guanosine-3′,5′-cyclic monophosphate (8-pCPT-cGMP) to activate the kinase. Co-immunoprecipitation (Co-IP) and bimolecular fluorescence complementation (BiFC) assay were performed to detect the interaction between PKG II and EGFR. Western blotting, mass spectrometry (MS) and site mutagenesis were performed to detect the PKG II-specific phosphorylation site on EGFR. The results showed that in living COS-7 cells, which were infected with Ad-PKG II and treated with 8-pCPT-cGMP, there was an interaction between PKG II and EGFR. The results also showed that PKG II caused threonine 669 (T669) phosphorylation of EGFR in HGC-27 and AGS cells infected with Ad-PKG II and treated with 8-pCPT-cGMP, and then inhibited the activation of EGFR. When T669 of EGFR was mutated to alanine, the inhibitory effect of PKG II on the activation of EGFR was eradicated. These findings suggested a PKG II-specific phosphorylation site on EGFR, and might be beneficial to illuminate the anti-tumor role of PKG II. • Interaction between PKG II and EGFR was detected in living cells. • PKG II caused T669 phosphorylation of EGFR. • PKG II inhibited the activation of EGFR via phosphorylating its T669. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Longitudinal brain imaging atlases with densely sampled time-points and ancillary anatomical information are of fundamental importance in studying early developmental characteristics of human and non-human primate brains during infancy, which feature extremely dynamic imaging appearance, brain shape and size. However, for non-human primates, which are highly valuable animal models for understanding human brains, the existing brain atlases are mainly developed based on adults or adolescents, denoting a notable lack of temporally densely-sampled atlases covering the dynamic early brain development. To fill this critical gap, in this paper, we construct a comprehensive set of longitudinal brain atlases and associated tissue probability maps (gray matter, white matter, and cerebrospinal fluid) with totally 12 time-points from birth to 4 years of age (i.e., 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 9, 12, 18, 24, 36, and 48 months of age) based on 175 longitudinal structural MRI scans from 39 typically-developing cynomolgus macaques, by leveraging state-of-the-art computational techniques tailored for early developing brains. Furthermore, to facilitate region-based analysis using our atlases, we also provide two popular hierarchy parcellations, i.e., cortical hierarchy maps (6 levels) and subcortical hierarchy maps (6 levels), on our longitudinal macaque brain atlases. These early developing atlases, which have the densest time-points during infancy (to the best of our knowledge), will greatly facilitate the studies of macaque brain development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have generated a great deal of interest in clinical application because of their potential use in regenerative medicine and tissue engineering. However, the therapeutic application of MSCs still remain limited unless the favorable effect of MSCs for tumor growth in vivo and the long-term safety of the clinical applications of MSCs are better understood. In this study, MSCs derived from fetal bone marrow (FMSCs) and adult MSCs (AMSCs) alone or FMSCs and AMSCs with tumor cell line (F6 or SW480) together were transplanted subcutaneously into BALB/c-nu/nu mice to observe the outgrowth of tumor, and the characteristics of tumor cells were investigated by pathological and immunohistochemical methods, flow cytometry and real-time quantitative PCR. The results showed that both FMSCs and AMSCs could favor tumor growth in vivo. The pathologic examination revealed that tumor tissues had rich vessel distribution, extensive necrosis and invasion surrounding normal tissues, such as muscular tissue and subcutaneous tissue. In the immunohistochemical examination, tumor cells mixed with MSCs transplanted subcutaneously exhibited elevated capability of proliferation, rich angiogenesis in tumor tissues and highly metastatic ability. To understand whether MSCs affected the general properties of the tumor cells in vivo, the expression of some surface antigens and Bmi-1 gene of tumor tissue cells was detected in this study. The results indicated that these parameters were not affected after the interaction of MSCs with tumor cells in vivo. These findings suggested that MSCs could favor tumor growth in vivo. It is necessary to carry out a study for assurance of the long-term safety before MSCs were used as a therapy tools in regenerative medicine and tissue engineering. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: It has previously been implicated that nerve growth factor (NGF) with its high-affinity receptor tyrosine kinase A (TrkA) could play an important role in the growth modulation of human tumor cells, such as glioblastoma multiform cell lines and human breast cancer cell lines. However, the direct mitogenic effects of NGF and TrkA in these tumor cells still remain to be elucidated. Herein we show, by immunofluorescence staining, that NGF was colocalized with γ-tubulin at the centrosomes or the spindle poles throughout the cell cycle and phosphorylated TrkA was colocalized with α-tubulin at mitotic spindle in the glioma cell line U251. The results suggest that NGF concentrated to centrosome can recruit its receptor TrkA there and cause phosphorylation of the latter. The phosphorylated TrkA with the tyrosine kinase activity may phosphorylate the tubulin and promote the mitotic spindle assembly. By these mechanisms, NGF can modulate the mitosis of human glioma cells. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]