Gender differences in chemical carcinogenesis

Gender differences in cancer incidence and mortality is a regular finding in epidemiological studies. In addition to reproductive organs this pattern is also seen in non-reproductive organs, with men being the most affected gender for the majority of cancer-sites. The underlying reasons for the observed disparity are not known, but can partly be explained by differences in exposures, lifestyle factors and biological factors such as hormones and metabolism. Exposure to carcinogenic chemicals is one of the risk factors for cancer, however little is known about gender-specific sensitivity to carcinogens. The overall aim of this thesis was to investigate gender differences in susceptibility to chemical carcinogens and the underlying mechanisms. In the National Toxicology Program (NTP) database detailed technical reports from 2-year bioassays on male and female rats exposed to the same concentration of chemical in well-controlled environments is publicly available. In the first paper, 477 chemicals tested on rats were evaluated for possible gender differences in the carcinogenic effect. The analysis of NTP bioassays showed that male rats were more affected than females. In a total of 278 carcinogens, 201 showed statistically significant gender differences in at least one non-reproductive organ. 69 carcinogens induced male-specific tumors and 19 induced female-specific tumors. Male-specific tumors included for example mesothelioma, kidney-, skin- and pancreas tumors, while female-specific tumors included neoplasms in pituitary, bone marrow and lymphoid tissues, lung and urinary bladder. The study further showed that genotoxicity was more common among male-specific carcinogens, compared to female-specific carcinogens. Based on the results from the NTP study eight male-specific pancreatic carcinogens were studied in more detail in the second study. To find common mechanisms that could clarify the male-specific effect of these carcinogens, the published literature on the eight chemicals was analyzed using a text-mining tool, CRAB. This analysis proposed inflammation as a common mechanism for these carcinogens. In in vitro studies it was found that all eight carcinogens increased the levels of the inflammatory protein Autotaxin (ATX), in parallel with increased invasiveness. Testosterone further increased ATX levels, alone and in combination with carcinogens. These data suggests that ATX may be a target for carcinogens that promote pancreatic tumor development. In the third study, the role of 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD), Polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) and estradiol on benzo(a)pyrene (BaP)-induced apoptosis and p53 signaling was investigated. The results showed that BaP induced apoptosis increased nuclear p53 and phosphorylation of FOXO3a. The apoptotic effect of BaP was attenuated by pretreatment of TCDD, PCB or estradiol, leading to a further increase in nuclear p53 and decreased levels of phosphorylated FOXO3a. FOXO3a dephosphorylation was further showed to be essential for the attenuated apoptosis and nuclear trapping of p53, which resulted in restoration of BaP-induced apoptosis. The data suggests an interaction between p53 and FOXO3a, which leads to an attenuated BaP-induced apoptosis in cells co-exposed to TCDD, PCB153 or estradiol. This study also reflects the effect of estradiol as a modulator of the toxic response caused by carcinogens. In conclusion, the results of this thesis show that male rats are more sensitive to chemical carcinogens compared to female rats. The data further suggests interactions between hormones and carcinogens that could be important for the cellular response to carcinogens

An integrative proteomics method identifies a regulator of translation during stem cell maintenance and differentiation

To characterize molecular changes during cell type transitions, the authors develop a method to simultaneously measure protein expression and thermal stability changes. They apply this approach to study differences between human pluripotent stem cells, their progenies, parental and allogeneic cells. Detailed characterization of cell type transitions is essential for cell biology in general and particularly for the development of stem cell-based therapies in regenerative medicine. To systematically study such transitions, we introduce a method that simultaneously measures protein expression and thermal stability changes in cells and provide the web-based visualization tool ProteoTracker. We apply our method to study differences between human pluripotent stem cells and several cell types including their parental cell line and differentiated progeny. We detect alterations of protein properties in numerous cellular pathways and components including ribosome biogenesis and demonstrate that modulation of ribosome maturation through SBDS protein can be helpful for manipulating cell stemness in vitro. Using our integrative proteomics approach and the web-based tool, we uncover a molecular basis for the uncoupling of robust transcription from parsimonious translation in stem cells and propose a method for maintaining pluripotency in vitro

Innovative strategy for 3D transfection of primary human stem cells with BMP-2 expressing plasmid DNA : A clinically translatable strategy for ex vivogene therapy

Ex vivo gene therapy offers enormous potential for cell-based therapies, however, cumbersome in vitro cell culture conditions have limited its use in clinical practice. We have optimized an innovative strategy for the transient transfection of bone morphogenetic protein-2 (BMP-2) expressing plasmids in suspended human stem cells within 5-min that enables efficient loading of the transfected cells into a 3D hydrogel system. Such a short incubation time for lipid-based DNA nanoparticles (lipoplexes) reduces cytotoxicity and at the same time reduces the processing time for cells to be transplanted. The encapsulated human mesenchymal stromal/stem cells (hMSCs) transfected with BMP-2 plasmid demonstrated high expression of an osteogenic transcription factor, namely RUNX2, but not the chondrogenic factor (SOX9), within the first three days. This activation was also reflected in the 7-day and 21-day experiment, which clearly indicated the induction of osteogenesis but not chondrogenesis. We believe our transient transfection method demonstrated in primary MSCs can be adapted for other therapeutic genes for different cell-based therapeutic applications

Fast and Efficient Transfection of Mouse Embryonic Stem Cells Using Non-Viral Reagents

Reliable and efficient DNA and RNA transfection methods are required when studying the role of individual genes in mouse pluripotent stem cells. However, these cells usually grow in tight clusters and are therefore more difficult to transfect than many other cell lines. We have found that transfection is especially challenging when mouse embryonic stem (mES) cells are cultured in the newly described 2i medium, which is based on two chemical inhibitors of differentiation pathways. In the present study we have performed a side-by-side comparison of commercially available, non-viral transfection reagents with regard to their ability to deliver plasmid DNA and siRNA into adherent and/or trypsinized mES cells cultured in 2i medium, assessing transfection rates, plasmid gene expression, siRNA mediated knockdown of Oct4 and viability. Finally, we present a fast and efficient method for transfection of trypsinized mES cells using the liposomal-based Lipofectamine 2000. With only a five-minute long transfection time we obtained at least 85 % transfected cells with 80 % maintained viability. Moreover, this protocol saves up to a day of experimental time since the cells are in suspension at the time of transfection, which allows for immediately re-plating into the appropriate format. This fast, simplified and highly efficient transfection method will be valuable for both basic research and high-throughput applications

Effect of the Addition Frequency of 5-Azacytidine in Both Micro- and Macroscale Cultures

Introduction: Human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) have a great clinical potential for tissue regeneration purposes due to its multilineage capability. Previous studies have reported that a single addition of 5-azacytidine (5-AzaC) causes the differentiation of hMSCs towards a myocardial lineage. The aim of this work was to evaluate the effect of 5-AzaC addition frequency on hMSCs priming (i.e., indicating an early genetic differentiation) using two culture environments. Methods: hMSCs were supplemented with 5-AzaC while cultured in well plates and in microfluidic chips. The impact of 5-AzaC concentration (10 and 20 mu M) and addition frequency (once, daily or continuously), as well as of culture period (2 or 5 days) on the genetic upregulation of PPAR gamma (adipocytes), PAX3 (myoblasts), SOX9 (chondrocytes) and RUNX2 (osteoblasts) was evaluated. Results: Daily delivering 5-AzaC caused a higher upregulation of PPAR gamma, SOX9 and RUNX2 in comparison to a single dose delivery, both under static well plates and dynamic microfluidic cultures. A particularly high gene expression of PPAR gamma (tenfold-change) could indicate priming of hMSCs towards adipocytes. Conclusions: Both macro- and microscale cultures provided results with similar trends, where addition frequency of 5-AzaC was a crucial factor to upregulate several genes. Microfluidics technology was proven to be a suitable platform for the continuous delivery of a drug and could be used for screening purposes in tissue engineering research

4 '-Guanidinium-modified siRNA : a molecular tool to control RNAi activity through RISC priming and selective antisense strand loading

We designed novel 4 '-C-guanidinocarbohydrazidomethyl-5-methyl uridine (GMU) modified small interfering RNA (siRNA) and evaluated its biophysical and biochemical properties. Incorporation of GMU units significantly increased the thermodynamic stability as well as the enzymatic stability against nucleases in human serum. A gene silencing experiment indicated that GMU modfied siRNA (siRNA6) resulted in approximate to 4.9-fold more efficient knockdown than unmodified siRNA.Correction in: CHEMICAL COMMUNICATIONS, Volume: 55, Issue: 67, Pages: 10028-10028, DOI: 10.1039/c9cc90352f</p

Synthetic design of asymmetric miRNA with engineered 3′-overhang to improve strand selection

We have developed a novel miRNA design that significantly improves strand selection within the RISC complex by engineering the 3′-end by adding extra nucleotides. Addition of seven nucleotides at the 3′-ends of the miR or miR* strand resulted in a thermodynamic asymmetry at either of the two-ends, which resulted in selective RISC recruitment as demonstrated by the stem-loop quantitative PCR experiment. Such selective recruitment was also corroborated at the protein level by Western blot analysis. In order to investigate the functional effect due to selective recruitment, we performed apoptosis and metastasis studies using human colon carcinoma cells (HCT116) and human osteosarcoma cells (MG63). These experiments indicated that the recruitment of miR strand is responsible for inducing apoptosis as well as to inhibit invasiveness of cancer cells. Recruitment of miR* strand, on the other hand, showed opposite effect. To the best of our knowledge, our strand engineering strategy is the first report of improved strand selection of desired miRNA strand by RISC without using any chemical modifications or mismatches. We believe such structural modifications of miR34a could mitigate some of the off-target effects of miRNA therapy and would also allow a better understanding of sequence-specific gene regulation. Such a design could also be adapted to other miRNA to enhance their therapeutic potential

PDMS leaching and its implications for on-chip studies focusing on bone regeneration applications

Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) is among the most widely used materials for organ-on-chip systems. Despite itsmultiple beneficial characteristics from an engineering point of view, there is a concern about the effect of PDMSon the cells cultured in such devices. The aim of this study was to enhance the understanding of the effect of PDMSon cellular behavior in a context relevant for on-chip studies. The focus was put on an indirect effect of PDMS,namely leaching of uncrosslinked oligomers, particularly for bone regeneration applications. PDMS-based chipswere prepared and analyzed for the potential release of PDMS oligomers within the microfluidic channel whenkept at different flow rates. Leaching of uncrosslinked oligomers from PDMS was quantified as silicon concen-tration by inductively coupled plasma - optical emission spectrometry and further confirmed by mass spec-trometry. Subsequently, PDMS-leached media, with a silicon concentration matching the on-chip experiment,were prepared to study cell proliferation and osteogenic differentiation of MC3T3-E1 pre-osteoblasts and humanmesenchymal stem cells. The silicon concentration initially detected in the media was inversely proportional tothe tested flow rates and decreased to control levels within 52 h. In addition, by curing the material overnightinstead of 2 h, regardless of the curing temperature (65 and 80 C), a large reduction in silicon concentration wasfound, indicating the importance of the PDMS curing parameters. Furthermore, it was shown that PDMS oligo-mers enhanced the differentiation of MC3T3-E1 pre-osteoblasts, this being a cell type dependent effect as nochanges in cell differentiation were observed for human mesenchymal stem cells. Overall, this study illustrates theimportance of optimization steps when using PDMS devices for biological studies, in particular PDMS curingconditions and extensive washing steps prior to an experiment

Saline Accelerates Oxime Reaction with Aldehyde and Keto Substrates at Physiological pH

We have discovered a simple and versatile reaction condition for oxime mediated bioconjugation reaction that could be adapted for both aldehyde and keto substrates. We found that saline accelerated the oxime kinetics in a concentration-dependent manner under physiological conditions. The reaction mechanism is validated by computational studies, and the versatility of the reaction is demonstrated by cell-surface labeling experiments. Saline offers an efficient and non-toxic catalytic option for performing the bioorthogonal-coupling reaction of biomolecules at the physiological pH. This saline mediated bioconjugation reaction represents the most biofriendly, mild and versatile approach for conjugating sensitive biomolecules and does not require any extensive purification step

The Impact of Formulation and Freeze Drying on the Properties and Performance of Freeze-Dried <i>Limosilactobacillus reuteri</i> R2LC

Freeze drying is a commonly used method for preserving probiotic bacteria and live biotherapeutic products. Before drying, the bacterial cells are formulated with a lyoprotectant, and the design of these two process steps are crucial to achieve a high-quality product. There are several factors that may affect the biological and physicochemical properties of the freeze-dried cells and we have used a Design of Experiment approach to investigate the effects of formulation and freeze-drying parameters on properties and performance of Limosilactobacillus reuteri R2LC. The biological characteristics of the dried bacteria were evaluated by measuring cell survival, metabolic activity and stability, and physicochemical characteristics were studied using visual inspection, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and analysis of residual moisture content and bacterial aggregation. A comparison between the lyoprotectants trehalose and sucrose showed that the latter gave better freeze-drying survival, metabolic activity, and storage stability. We also want to highlight that there was a correlation between bacterial concentration, metabolic activity, and aggregation of bacteria, where a higher concentration (1010 CFU/mL) resulted in both higher metabolic activity and aggregation. Several other process and formulation factors affected both the biological and physicochemical properties of freeze-dried L. reuteri R2LC and it could be concluded that care must be taken to develop a production method that generates a product with high and consistent quality. These results may, or may not, be strain specific