11 research outputs found
Anoikis Resistance: An Essential Prerequisite for Tumor Metastasis
Metastasis is a multistep process including dissociation of cancer cells from primary sites, survival in the vascular system, and proliferation in distant target organs. As a barrier to metastasis, cells normally undergo an apoptotic process known as “anoikis,” a form of cell death due to loss of contact with the extracellular matrix or neighboring cells. Cancer cells acquire anoikis resistance to survive after detachment from the primary sites and travel through the circulatory and lymphatic systems to disseminate throughout the body. Because recent technological advances enable us to detect rare circulating tumor cells, which are anoikis resistant, currently, anoikis resistance becomes a hot topic in cancer research. Detailed molecular and functional analyses of anoikis resistant cells may provide insight into the biology of cancer metastasis and identify novel therapeutic targets for prevention of cancer dissemination. This paper comprehensively describes recent investigations of the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying anoikis and anoikis resistance in relation to intrinsic and extrinsic death signaling, epithelial-mesenchymal transition, growth factor receptors, energy metabolism, reactive oxygen species, membrane microdomains, and lipid rafts
Towards long-tailed, multi-label disease classification from chest X-ray: Overview of the CXR-LT challenge
Many real-world image recognition problems, such as diagnostic medical
imaging exams, are "long-tailed" \unicode{x2013} there are a few common
findings followed by many more relatively rare conditions. In chest
radiography, diagnosis is both a long-tailed and multi-label problem, as
patients often present with multiple findings simultaneously. While researchers
have begun to study the problem of long-tailed learning in medical image
recognition, few have studied the interaction of label imbalance and label
co-occurrence posed by long-tailed, multi-label disease classification. To
engage with the research community on this emerging topic, we conducted an open
challenge, CXR-LT, on long-tailed, multi-label thorax disease classification
from chest X-rays (CXRs). We publicly release a large-scale benchmark dataset
of over 350,000 CXRs, each labeled with at least one of 26 clinical findings
following a long-tailed distribution. We synthesize common themes of
top-performing solutions, providing practical recommendations for long-tailed,
multi-label medical image classification. Finally, we use these insights to
propose a path forward involving vision-language foundation models for few- and
zero-shot disease classification
Anoikis Resistance: An Essential Prerequisite for Tumor Metastasis
Metastasis is a multistep process including dissociation of cancer cells from primary sites, survival in the vascular system, and proliferation in distant target organs. As a barrier to metastasis, cells normally undergo an apoptotic process known as "anoikis," a form of cell death due to loss of contact with the extracellular matrix or neighboring cells. Cancer cells acquire anoikis resistance to survive after detachment from the primary sites and travel through the circulatory and lymphatic systems to disseminate throughout the body. Because recent technological advances enable us to detect rare circulating tumor cells, which are anoikis resistant, currently, anoikis resistance becomes a hot topic in cancer research. Detailed molecular and functional analyses of anoikis resistant cells may provide insight into the biology of cancer metastasis and identify novel therapeutic targets for prevention of cancer dissemination. This paper comprehensively describes recent investigations of the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying anoikis and anoikis resistance in relation to intrinsic and extrinsic death signaling, epithelial-mesenchymal transition, growth factor receptors, energy metabolism, reactive oxygen species, membrane microdomains, and lipid rafts
Regulatory transcription factor (CooA)-driven carbon monoxide partial pressure sensing whole-cell biosensor
We designed and constructed a whole-cell biosensor capable of detecting the presence and quantity of carbon monoxide (CO) using the CO regulatory transcription factor. This biosensor utilizes CooA, a CO-sensing transcription regulator that activates the expression of carbon monoxide dehydrogenase (CODH), to detect the presence of CO and respond by triggering the expression of a GUS reporter protein (β-glucuronidase). The GUS reporter protein is expressed from a CO-induced CooA-binding promoter (PcooF) by CooA and enables the effective colorimetric detection of CO. An Escherichia coli strain used to validate the biosensor showed growth and GUS activity under anaerobic conditions; this study used the inert gas (Ar) to create anaerobic conditions. The pBRCO biosensor could successfully detect the presence of CO in the headspace. Moreover, the GUS-specific activity of pBRCO according to the CO strength as partial pressure followed Michaelis-Menten kinetics (R2 = 0.98). It was confirmed that the GUS-specific activity of pBRCO increased linearly up to 30.39 kPa (R2 = 0.98), and thus, a quantitative analysis of CO concentration (i.e., partial pressure) was possible
Recombinant lignin peroxidase with superior thermal stability and melanin decolorization efficiency in a typical human skin-mimicking environment
Recently, the desire for a safe and effective method for skin whitening has been growing in the cosmetics industry. Commonly used tyrosinase-inhibiting chemical reagents exhibit side effects. Thus, recent studies have focused on performing melanin decolorization with enzymes as an alternative due to the low toxicity of enzymes and their ability to decolorize melanin selectively. Herein, 10 different isozymes were expressed as recombinant lignin peroxidases (LiPs) from Phanerochaete chrysosporium (PcLiPs), and PcLiP isozyme 4 (PcLiP04) was selected due to its high stability and activity at pH 5.5 and 37 ??C, which is close to human skin conditions. In vitro melanin decolorization results indicated that PcLiP04 exhibited at least 2.9-fold higher efficiency than that of well-known lignin peroxidase (PcLiP01) in a typical human skin-mimicking environment. The interaction force between melanin films measured by a surface forces apparatus (SFA) revealed that the decolorization of melanin by PcLiP04 harbors a disrupted structure, possibly interrupting ??????? stacking and/or hydrogen bonds. In addition, a 3D reconstructed human pigmented epidermis skin model showed a decrease in melanin area to 59.8% using PcLiP04, which suggests that PcLiP04 exhibits a strong potential for skin whitening