Original Article Morusin induces cell death through inactivating STAT3 signaling in prostate cancer cells

Abstract: STAT3 has been recognized as an efficacious drug target for prostate cancer because of its constitutive activation in this fatal disease. We recently identified the root bark of Morus alba Linn. as a potential STAT3 inhibitor among 33 phytomedicines traditionally used in Korea. Morusin, an active compound isolated from the root bark of Morus alba, has shown anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory effects. In the present study, we examined whether morusin has a potential as an anti-cancer agent in prostate cancer. We found that morusin suppressed viability of prostate cancer cells, but little effect in normal human prostate epithelial cells. Morusin also reduced STAT3 activity by inhibiting its phosphorylation, nuclear accumulation, and DNA binding activity. In addition, morusin down-regulated expression of STAT3 target genes encoding Bcl-xL, Bcl-2, Survivin, c-Myc and Cyclin D1, which are involved in regulation of apoptosis and cell cycle. Furthermore, morusin induced apoptosis in human prostate cancer cells by reducing STAT3 activity. Taken together, these results suggest that morusin could be a potentially therapeutic agent for prostate cancer by reducing STAT3 activity and inducing apoptosis

Nanostring-based multigene assay to predict recurrence for gastric cancer patients after surgery

10.1371/journal.pone.0090133PLoS ONE93-POLN

Observation of Mott Transition in VO_2 Based Transistors

An abrupt Mott metal-insulator transition (MIT) rather than the continuous Hubbard MIT near a critical on-site Coulomb energy U/U_c=1 is observed for the first time in VO_2, a strongly correlated material, by inducing holes of about 0.018% into the conduction band. As a result, a discontinuous jump of the density of states on the Fermi surface is observed and inhomogeneity inevitably occurs. The gate effect in fabricated transistors is clear evidence that the abrupt MIT is induced by the excitation of holes.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Shuffled Discrete Sine Transform in Inter‐Prediction Coding

Video compression exploits statistical, spatial, and temporal redundancy, as well as transform and quantization. In particular, the transform in a frequency domain plays a major role in energy compaction of spatial domain data into frequency domain data. The high efficient video coding standard uses the type‐II discrete cosine transform (DCT‐II) and type‐VII discrete sine transform (DST‐VII) to improve the coding efficiency of residual data. However, the DST‐VII is applied only to the Intra 4 × 4 residual block because it yields relatively small gains in the larger block than in the 4 × 4 block. In this study, after rearranging the data of the residual block, we apply the DST‐VII to the inter‐residual block to achieve coding gain. The rearrangement of the residual block data is similar to the arrangement of the basis vector with a the lowest frequency component of the DST‐VII. Experimental results show that the proposed method reduces the luma‐chroma (Cb+Cr) BD rates by approximately 0.23% to 0.22%, 0.44% to 0.58%, and 0.46% to 0.65% for the random access, low delay B, and low delay P configurations, respectively

Issues of Advanced Architectural Features in the Design of a Timing Tool

This paper describes a timing tool being developed by a real-time research group at Seoul National University. Our focus is on the issues resulting from advanced architectural features such as pipelined execution and cache memories found in many modern RISC-style processors. For each architectural feature we state the issues and explain our approach. 1 Introduction In real-time computing systems, tasks have timing requirements (i.e., deadlines) that must be met for correct operation. Various scheduling techniques have been proposed to guarantee such timing requirements. In many cases, these scheduling techniques require that the worst case execution times (WCETs) of tasks be known a priori. This paper describes a timing tool that is being developed by a real-time research group at Seoul National University. This timing tool aims at accurately calculating guaranteed worst case execution times of programs for computer systems that use modern RISC-style microprocessors. Our particular fo..

An Accurate Instruction Cache Analysis Technique for Real-time Systems

An accurate and reliable estimation of a task's worst case execution time (WCET) is crucial for scheduling of real-time tasks. However, instruction caches, which are extensively used in computer systems today, impose a serious problem in analyzing the WCETs of tasks. The problem stems from the fact that the cache hit or miss of an instruction reference can be known only after the worst case execution path has been found and the worst case execution path, on the other hand, can be located only after the cache hit or miss of every instruction reference is known. This cyclic dependency, in many cases, leads to a pessimistic estimation of WCETs. This paper proposes an analysis technique that is immune from the above cyclic dependency and accurately predicts the WCETs of tasks in the presence of instruction caches. The key to the proposed technique is an extension of the timing schema[16] so that the timing variation due to instruction caches can be accurately accounted for. This paper also..

An Accurate Worst Case Timing Analysis Technique for RISC Processors

An accurate and safe estimation of a task's worst case execution time (WCET) is crucial for reasoning about the timing properties of real-time systems. In RISC processors, the execution time of a program construct (e.g., a statement) is affected by various factors such as cache hits/misses and pipeline hazards, and these factors impose serious problems in analyzing the WCETs of tasks. To analyze the timing effects of RISC's pipelined execution and cache memory, this paper proposes extensions of the original timing schema [26] where the timing information associated with each program construct is a simple time-bound. We associate with each program construct what we call a WCTA (Worst Case Timing Abstraction), which contains detailed timing information of every execution path that might be the worst case execution path of the program construct. This extension leads to a revised timing schema that is similar to the original timing schema except that concatenation and pruning operations on..

Morusin Induces TRAIL Sensitization by Regulating EGFR and DR5 in Human Glioblastoma Cells

Glioblastoma is one of the most malignant primary tumors, and the prognosis for glioblastoma patients remains poor. Tumor-necrosis-factor-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL) is considered a promising anticancer agent due to its remarkable ability to selectively kill tumor cells. However, since many cancers are resistant to TRAIL, strategies to overcome resistance are required for the successful use of TRAIL in the clinic. In the present study, the potential of morusin as a TRAIL sensitizer in human glioblastoma cells was evaluated. Treatment with TRAIL or morusin alone showed weak cytotoxicity in human glioblastoma cells. However, combination treatment of TRAIL with morusin synergistically decreased cell viability and increased apoptosis compared with single treatment. Morusin induced expression of death receptor 5 (DR5), but not DR4 or decoy receptors (DcR1 and DcR2). Furthermore, morusin significantly decreased anti-apoptotic molecules survivin and XIAP. In addition, morusin reduced expression of EGFR and PDFGR as well as phosphorylation of STAT3, possibly mediating down-regulation of survivin and XIAP. Together these results suggest that morusin enhances TRAIL sensitivity in human glioblastoma cells through regulating expression of DR5 and EGFR. Therefore, the combination treatment of TRAIL and morusin may be a new therapeutic strategy for malignant glioma patients