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Abstract Background Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) can manifest ocular complications stemming from hematologic irregularities or direct infiltration of neoplastic cells. This article details the case of a patient with newly diagnosed CML exhibiting elevated platelet counts (PLT) who developed panuveitis accompanied by retinal vascular occlusion. Case presentation A 52-year-old woman experienced a notable decline in vision in her left eye over a 2-week period. Classical anterior uveitis, vitreous cavity opacity, optic nerve edema, and retinal vascular obstruction were observed. The right eye exhibited papilledema and retinal vein tortuosity. Despite admission, the condition of both eyes deteriorated, accompanied by a continuous increase in PLT. She was diagnosed with CML based on bone marrow biopsy and chromosomal examination. Following platelet apheresis therapy and chemotherapy, the condition of her right eye significantly improved, but the left eye’s condition remained irreversible. Conclusions This is a rare case of newly diagnosed CML presenting with diverse ocular manifestations in both eyes. The disparate outcomes in eyes with varying lesion stages underscore the importance of prompt diagnosis.

BackgroundSarcomatoid urothelial carcinoma (SUC) is a rare renal malignancy. Its biological malignancy is high, the prognosis is poor, diagnostic and treatment options are few, and there is no standard treatment plan.Case presentationIn this case, a 64-year-old woman was hospitalized with fever and lower back pain one week previously. The preliminary diagnosis was a right kidney stone with a urinary tract infection. After the anti-infection treatment, a percutaneous right nephrostomy was performed. The intraoperative biopsy (renal pelvis) finding was infiltrating urothelial carcinoma with a sarcomatoid variation. Subsequently, radical surgery was performed for cancer of the right renal pelvis. Implant metastasis of the abdominal wall and adjacent abdominal cavity occurred half a month after the surgery. The lesion was resected again, and two cycles of doxorubicin plus carboplatin chemotherapy were administered. However, the disease progressed more rapidly after the chemotherapy. With the written consent of the patient, the treatment was altered to targeted immune therapy with toripalimab plus anlotinib. A clinical cure was achieved after nine cycles of treatment with no obvious lesions on imaging. The maintenance therapy was administered consecutively for over a year, and the patient is at present still in good condition with a disease-free survival exceeding two years.ConclusionThis case proves that the combination of toripalimab and anlotinib is effective in the treatment of recurrent renal SUC. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first reported case of a patient with advanced recurrent urothelial carcinoma of the renal pelvis sarcomatoid cured with this therapy.

Abstract Background Protein palmitoylation, which is catalyzed by palmitoyl-transferase and de-palmitoyl-transferase, plays a crucial role in various biological processes. However, the landscape and dynamics of protein palmitoylation in human cancers are not well understood. Methods We utilized 23 palmitoyl-acyltransferases and seven de-palmitoyl-acyltransferases as palmitoylation-related genes for protein palmitoylation analysis. Multiple publicly available datasets were employed to conduct pan-cancer analysis, examining the transcriptome, genomic alterations, clinical outcomes, and correlation with c-Myc (Myc) for palmitoylation-related genes. Real-time quantitative PCR and immunoblotting were performed to assess the expression of palmitoylation-related genes and global protein palmitoylation levels in cancer cells treated with Myc depletion or small molecule inhibitors. Protein docking and drug sensitivity analyses were employed to predict small molecules that target palmitoylation-related genes. Results We identified associations between palmitoylation and cancer subtype, stage, and patient survival. We discovered that abnormal DNA methylation and oncogenic Myc-driven transcriptional regulation synergistically contribute to the dysregulation of palmitoylation-related genes. This dysregulation of palmitoylation was closely correlated with immune infiltration in the tumor microenvironment and the response to immunotherapy. Importantly, dysregulated palmitoylation was found to modulate canonical cancer-related pathways, thus influencing tumorigenesis. To support our findings, we performed a proof-of-concept experiment showing that depletion of Myc led to reduced expression of most palmitoylation-related genes, resulting in decreased global protein palmitoylation levels. Through mass spectrometry and enrichment analyses, we also identified palmitoyl-acyltransferases ZDHHC7 and ZDHHC23 as significant contributors to mTOR signaling, DNA repair, and immune pathways, highlighting their potential roles in tumorigenesis. Additionally, our study explored the potential of three small molecular (BI-2531, etoposide, and piperlongumine) to modulate palmitoylation by targeting the expression or activity of palmitoylation-related genes or enzymes. Conclusions Overall, our findings underscore the critical role of dysregulated palmitoylation in tumorigenesis and the response to immunotherapy, mediated through classical cancer-related pathways and immune cell infiltration. Additionally, we propose that the aforementioned three small molecule hold promise as potential therapeutics for modulating palmitoylation, thereby offering novel avenues for cancer therapy.

Homocysteine-inducible endoplasmic reticulum protein (HERP) is an endoplasmic reticulum (ER)-resident protein and important for the adaptation of cellular protein homeostasis by ER-associated degradation (ERAD) system. HERP interactors are critical for cellular viability and the reaction to ER stress. To explore the exact mechanisms by which HERP performed the biological functions, we conducted an interaction analysis of HERP protein in HeLa cells by co-immunoprecipitation (Co-IP) and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometer (LC-MS)/MS coupled with label-free quantification (LFQ). Among the interactome results, 123 proteins significantly interacted with HERP, which leads to numerous biological processes including protein import into nucleus, ubiquitin-dependent ERAD pathway, negative regulation of apoptotic process, and protein transport from ER, along with multiple pathways including several diseases, protein processing in ER, fatty acid metabolism, and steroid biosynthesis. Furthermore, we selected several prey proteins from the interactome data and confirmed that HERP interacted with ancient ubiquitous protein 1 (AUP1), Fas-associated factor family member 2 (FAF2), tripartite motif containing 47 (TRIM47), acyl-CoA synthetase long-chain family member 3 (ACSL3), sequestosome 1 (SQSTM1), and poly(rC) binding protein 2 (PCBP2) by Co-IP and confocal microscopy experiments, respectively. Moreover, the expression and location of several interacted proteins were obviously altered in response to ER stress induced by Thapsigargin stimulation and Enterovirus 71 infection. In conclusion, our findings revealed that the vital proteins interacted with HERP to mediate signaling transduction, thus providing novel clues for the mechanisms of HERP associated with ERAD and metabolism in response to ER stress under physiological and pathological conditions.

Head and neck cancer is the sixth most frequent cancer all over the world, with the majority of subtypes of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). Cellular senescence-associated genes have been confirmed to play a critical role in cancer and have the potential to be prognostic biomarkers for cancer. Clinical information of HNSCC samples and expression data were acquired from public databases. Expression profiles of genes related to cellular senescence were used to identify molecular subtypes by consensus clustering. To screen differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between different subtypes, differential analysis was performed. We used the univariate Cox regression to identify prognostic DEGs and performed least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) to optimize and construct a prognostic model. CIBERSORT, ESTIMATE, and TIDE tools were applied to estimate immune characteristics. Four molecular subtypes were established based on cellular senescence-associated genes. Differential prognosis was observed among different subtypes with C4 having the longest overall survival and C1 having the worst prognosis. C4 subtype also showed the highest immune infiltration. We screened a total of eight cellular senescence prognosis-related genes and established a cellular senescence-related signature score (CSRS.Score) that could stratify samples into high-CSRS.Score and low-CSRS.Score groups. The high-CSRS.Score group had worse prognosis, lower immune infiltration, and lower response to immunotherapy. We further improved the prognostic model and survival prediction by combining CSRS.Score with clinicopathological features using a decision tree model, which had high predictive accuracy and survival prediction. This study demonstrated an important role of cellular senescence in HNSCC. The identified eight cellular senescence-associated genes have the potential to provide ideas for adjuvant treatment and personalized treatment of HNSCC patients.

Breast cancer is one of the most common types of cancer and is the leading cause of cancer-related death. Diagnosis of breast cancer is based on the evaluation of pathology slides. In the era of digital pathology, these slides can be converted into digital whole slide images (WSIs) for further analysis. However, due to their sheer size, digital WSIs diagnoses are time consuming and challenging. In this study, we present a lightweight architecture that consists of a bilinear structure and MobileNet-V3 network, bilinear MobileNet-V3 (BM-Net), to analyze breast cancer WSIs. We utilized the WSI dataset from the ICIAR2018 Grand Challenge on Breast Cancer Histology Images (BACH) competition, which contains four classes: normal, benign, in situ carcinoma, and invasive carcinoma. We adopted data augmentation techniques to increase diversity and utilized focal loss to remove class imbalance. We achieved high performance, with 0.88 accuracy in patch classification and an average 0.71 score, which surpassed state-of-the-art models. Our BM-Net shows great potential in detecting cancer in WSIs and is a promising clinical tool.

Esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) is a common malignancy with poor prognosis and survival rate. To identify meaningful long non-coding RNA (lncRNA), microRNA (miRNA), and messenger RNA (mRNA) modules related to the ESCC prognosis, The Cancer Genome Atlas-ESCC was downloaded and processed, and then, a weighted gene co-expression network analysis was applied to construct lncRNA co-expression networks, miRNA co-expression networks, and mRNA co-expression networks. Twenty-one hub lncRNAs, seven hub miRNAs, and eight hub mRNAs were clarified. Additionally, a competitive endogenous RNAs network was constructed, and the emerging role of the network involved in head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) was also analyzed using several webtools. The expression levels of eight hub genes (TBC1D2, ATP6V0E1, SPI1, RNASE6, C1QB, C1QC, CSF1R, and C1QA) were different between normal esophageal tissues and HNSCC tissues. The expression levels of TBC1D2 and ATP6V0E1 were related to the survival time of HNSCC. The competitive endogenous RNAs network might provide common mechanisms involving in ESCC and HNSCC. More importantly, useful clues were provided for clinical treatments of both diseases based on novel molecular advances.