The Multiple Roles of Tyrosinase-Related Protein-2/L- Dopachrome Tautomerase in Melanoma: Biomarker, Therapeutic Target, and Molecular Driver in Tumor Progression

Cutaneous malignant melanoma (CMM), which is ranked as the 8th most common cancers in the US, makes 4–7% of skin cancers but it causes approximately 80% of skin cancer deaths. CMM is characterized by insidious and fast progression, heterogenic evolution, and significant resistance to numerous therapeutic strategies. CMM is the result of the uncontrolled proliferation of melanocytes, the cells which reside in the basal layer of the epidermis. The most efficient therapy is the surgical removal if the lesion is in an early stage. For metastatic melanomas, there are different strategies, extremely rarely leading to total cure. Tyrosinase-related protein-2 (TRP2) or L-Dopachrome tautomerase (L-DCT) is a member of Tyrosinase-related protein family known for many years for its enzymatic activity in the distal steps of melanogenesis. The modern DCT image is focusing more on processes and mechanisms related to cell development and response to environmental and therapeutic stressors in normal and transformed cell phenotypes. This chapter provides an extended, updated biological status of TRP2/L-DCT encompassing the structural and functional particularities within melanoma molecularity, in the attempt to get new insights into the complex mechanisms of this neoplasm and raise the interest for DCT unexplored yet potential in melanoma diagnosis/prognosis and therapy

The Book Budget and Inflation

This article points to the rising cost of books that occurred in the early 1980s and its affects on library budgets. The costs made it so that book acquisitions, essential for collection development, plummeted. This necessitated other sources of funding, such as the creation of friends of the library groups, such as the Library Associates of Syracuse University

Substrate‐Guided Front‐Face Reaction Revealed by Combined Structural Snapshots and Metadynamics for the Polypeptide N‐Acetylgalactosaminyltransferase 2

The retaining glycosyltransferase GalNAc-T2 is a member of a large family of human polypeptide GalNActransferases that is responsible for the post-translational modification of many cell-surface proteins. By the use of combined structural and computational approaches, we provide the first set of structural snapshots of the enzyme during the catalytic cycle and combine these with quantum-mechanics/molecular-mechanics (QM/MM) metadynamics to unravel the catalytic mechanism of this retaining enzyme at the atomicelectronic level of detail. Our study provides a detailed structural rationale for an ordered bi–bi kinetic mechanism and reveals critical aspects of substrate recognition, which dictate the specificity for acceptor Thr versus Ser residues andenforce a front-face SNi-type reaction in which the substrate Nacetyl sugar substituent coordinates efficient glycosyl transfer

APC loss affects DNA damage repair causing doxorubicin resistance in breast cancer cells

Chemoresistance is one of the leading causes of cancer-related deaths in the United States. Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC), a subtype lacking the known breast cancer receptors used for targeted therapy, is reliant on chemotherapy as the standard of care. The Adenomatous Polyposis Coli (APC) tumor suppressor is mutated or hypermethylated in 70% of sporadic breast cancers with APC-deficient tumors resembling the TNBC subtype. Using mammary tumor cells from the ApcMin/+ mouse model crossed to the Polyoma middle T antigen (PyMT) transgenic model, we previously showed that APC loss decreased sensitivity to doxorubicin (DOX). Understanding the molecular basis for chemoresistance is essential for the advancement of novel therapeutic approaches to ultimately improve patient outcomes. Resistance can be caused via different methods, but here we focus on the DNA repair response with DOX treatment. We show that MMTV-PyMT;ApcMin/+ cells have decreased DNA damage following 24 hour DOX treatment compared to MMTV-PyMT;Apc+/+ cells. This decreased damage is first observed 24 hours post-treatment and continues throughout 24 hours of drug recovery. Activation of DNA damage response pathways (ATM, Chk1, and Chk2) are decreased at 24 hours DOX-treatment in MMTV-PyMT;ApcMin/+ cells compared to control cells, but show activation at earlier time points. Using inhibitors that target DNA damage repair kinases (ATM, ATR, and DNA-PK), we showed that ATM and DNA-PK inhibition increased DOX-induced apoptosis in the MMTV-PyMT;ApcMin/+ cells. In the current work, we demonstrated that APC loss imparts resistance through decreased DNA damage response, which can be attenuated through DNA repair inhibition, suggesting the potential clinical use of DNA repair inhibitions as combination therapy

The pore structure and gating mechanism of K2P channels

K2P potassium channels are important regulators of cellular excitability. This study reveals that in contrast to most other K+ channels the primary gating mechanism in the K2P channel TREK-1 does not involve opening and closure of the cytoplasmic bundle crossing, but takes place close to or within the selectivity filter

Stability for Receding-horizon Stochastic Model Predictive Control

A stochastic model predictive control (SMPC) approach is presented for discrete-time linear systems with arbitrary time-invariant probabilistic uncertainties and additive Gaussian process noise. Closed-loop stability of the SMPC approach is established by appropriate selection of the cost function. Polynomial chaos is used for uncertainty propagation through system dynamics. The performance of the SMPC approach is demonstrated using the Van de Vusse reactions.Comment: American Control Conference (ACC) 201