Search

Marsdeniae tenacissimae extract (MTE), commonly known as Xiao-Ai-Ping in China, is a traditional Chinese herb medicine capable of inhibiting proliferation and metastasis and boosting apoptosis in various cancer cells. However, little is known about the contribution of MTE towards tumor angiogenesis and the underlying mechanism. The present study aimed to evaluate the effects of MTE on the proliferation and apoptosis of human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) and the molecular mechanism. 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-5(3-carboxymethoxyphenyl)-2-(4-sulfopheny)-2H-tetrazolium, inner salt (MTS) and PI-stained flow cytometry assays revealed that MTE dose-dependently reduced the proliferation of HUVECs by arresting cell cycle at S phase (P < 0.05). Annexin V-FITC/PI-stained flow cytometry confirmed that MTE (160 μL·L -1 ) enhanced the apoptosis of HUVECs significantly (P < 0.001). Real-time quantitative RT-PCR and Western blot analyses showed an increase in Bax expression and a sharply decline in Bcl-2 expression; caspase-3 was activated simultaneously in a dose-dependent manner (P < 0.05). Further study observed the dose-dependent down-regulation of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) receptor-2 (VEGFR-2), P2Y6 receptor (P2Y6R), and chemokine (C-C motif) ligand 2 (CCL-2), along with the activation of PKC Δ and up-regulation of p53 in a dose-dependent manner in MTE-treated selected cells (P < 0.05). Collectively, the results from the present study suggested that MTE suppressed the proliferation by attenuating CCL-2-mediated VEGF/VEGFR2 interactions and promoted the apoptosis through PKCΔ-induced p53-dependent mitochondrial pathway in HUVECs, supporting that MTE may be developed as a potent anti-cancer medicine., (Copyright © 2016 China Pharmaceutical University. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Breast cancer (BC) is the most common cancer among women worldwide. However, there is insufficient research that focuses on the expression and molecular mechanisms of microRNA (miR)-204-5p in BC. In the current study, data were downloaded from the Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) and the University of California Santa Cruz (UCSC) Xena databases. They were then used to undertake a meta-analysis that leveraged the standard mean difference (SMD) and summarized receiver operating characteristic (sROC) to evaluate the expression of the precursor miR-204 and mature miR-204-5p in BC. Additionally, an intersection of predicted genes, differentially expressed genes (DEGs) from the TCGA database and the GEO database were plotted to acquire desirable putative genes. Gene Ontology (GO), Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway and protein-protein interaction (PPI) network analyses were performed to assess the potential pathways and hub genes of miR-204-5p in BC. A decreased trend in precursor miR-204 expression was detected in 1,077 BC tissue samples in comparison to 104 para-carcinoma tissue samples in the TCGA database. Further, the expression of mature miR-204-5p was markedly downregulated in 756 BC tissue samples in comparison to 76 para-carcinoma tissue samples in the UCSC Xena database. The outcome of the SMD from meta-analysis also indicated that the expression of miR-204-5p was markedly reduced in 2,306 BC tissue samples in comparison to 367 para-carcinoma tissue samples. Additionally, the ROC and sROC values indicated that miR-204-5p had a great discriminatory capacity for BC. In GO analysis, 'cell development', 'cell surface activity', and 'receptor agonist activity' were the most enriched terms; in KEGG analysis, 'endocytosis' was significantly enriched. Rac GTPase activating protein 1 (RACGAP1) was considered the hub gene in the PPI network. In conclusion, miR-204-5p may serve a suppressor role in the oncogenesis and advancement of BC, and miR-204-5p may have crucial functions in BC by targeting RACGAP1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to fabricate canine bone marrow mesenchymal stem cell sheet through the use of vitamin C, to identify the biological characteristics of the resulting cell sheets, and to reveal the potential mechanism of cell-sheet promotion by vitamin C. This study used vitamin C to induce bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells to proliferate. The resulting cells secreted large amounts of collagen, thereby shortening the construction time of the cell-sheet layer. In addition to these aims, we identified biological microcharacteristics of the cell sheet through histological observation, transmission electron microscopy, real-time PCR detection, immunohistochemical detection, and osteogenesis-induction experiments on the cell sheet. We were able to stably and rapidly construct bone marrow mesenchymal stem cell sheet, effectively harvest it, and transfer the seed cells for tissue engineering. This study indicates that the use of vitamin C for harvesting mesenchymal stem cell sheets from bone marrow may provide an easy and practical approach for bone tissue regeneration. SCANNING 37:42-48, 2015. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]