Mechanism of the Anti-inflammatory Effect of Curcumin: PPAR-γ Activation

Curcumin, the phytochemical component in turmeric, is used as a dietary spice and a topical ointment for the treatment of inflammation in India for centuries. Curcumin (diferuloylmethane) is relatively insoluble in water, but dissolves in acetone, dimethylsulphoxide, and ethanol. Commercial grade curcumin contains 10–20% curcuminoids, desmethoxycurcumin, and bisdesmethoxycurcumin and they are as effective as pure curcumin. Based on a number of clinical studies in carcinogenesis, a daily oral dose of 3.6 g curcumin has been efficacious for colorectal cancer and advocates its advancement into Phase II clinical studies. In addition to the anticancer effects, curcumin has been effective against a variety of disease conditions in both in vitro and in vivo preclinical studies. The present review highlights the importance of curcumin as an anti-inflammatory agent and suggests that the beneficial effect of curcumin is mediated by the upregulation of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-γ (PPAR-γ) activation

Multitask quantum thermal machines and cooperative effects

Including phonon-assisted inelastic process in thermoelectric devices is able to enhance the performance of nonequilibrium work extraction. In this work, we demonstrate that inelastic phonon-thermoelectric devices have a fertile functionality diagram, where particle current and phononic heat currents are coupled and fueled by chemical potential difference. Such devices can simultaneously perform multiple tasks, e.g., heat engines, refrigerators, and heat pumps. Guided by the entropy production, we mainly study the efficiencies and coefficients of performance of multitask quantum thermal machines, where the roles of the inelastic scattering process and multiple biases in multiterminal setups are emphasized. Specifically, in a three-terminal double-quantum-dot setup with a tunable gate, we show that it efficiently performs two useful tasks due to the phonon-assisted inelastic process. Moreover, the cooperation between the longitudinal and transverse thermoelectric effects in the three-terminal thermoelectric systems leads to markedly improved performance of the thermal machines. While for the four-terminal four-quantum-dot thermoelectric setup, we find that additional thermodynamic affinity furnishes the system with both enriched functionality and enhanced efficiency. Our work provides insights into optimizing phonon-thermoelectric devices.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figure

An amino acid metabolism-based seventeen-gene signature correlates with the clinical outcome and immune features in pancreatic cancer

Background: Pancreatic cancer is an aggressive tumor with a low 5-year survival rate and primary resistance to most therapy. Amino acid (AA) metabolism is highly correlated with tumor growth, crucial to the aggressive biological behavior of pancreatic cancer; nevertheless, the comprehensive predictive significance of genes that regulate AA metabolism in pancreatic cancer remains unknown.Methods: The mRNA expression data downloaded from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) were derived as the training cohort, and the GSE57495 cohort from Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database was applied as the validation cohort. Random survival forest (RSF) and the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO) regression analysis were employed to screen genes and construct an AA metabolism-related risk signature (AMRS). Kaplan-Meier analysis and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve were performed to assess the prognostic value of AMRS. We performed genomic alteration analysis and explored the difference in tumor microenvironment (TME) landscape associated with KRAS and TP53 mutation in both high- and low-AMRS groups. Subsequently, the relationships between AMRS and immunotherapy and chemotherapy sensitivity were evaluated.Results: A 17-gene AA metabolism-related risk model in the TCGA cohort was constructed according to RSF and LASSO. After stratifying patients into high- and low-AMRS groups based on the optimal cut-off value, we found that high-AMRS patients had worse overall survival (OS) in the training cohort (a median OS: 13.1 months vs. 50.1 months, p < 0.0001) and validation cohort (a median OS: 16.2 vs. 30.5 months, p = 1e-04). Genetic mutation analysis revealed that KRAS and TP53 were significantly more mutated in high-AMRS group, and patients with KRAS and TP53 alterations had significantly higher risk scores than those without. Based on the analysis of TME, low-AMRS group displayed significantly higher immune score and more enrichment of T Cell CD8+ cells. In addition, high-AMRS-group exhibited higher TMB and significantly lower tumor immune dysfunction and exclusion (TIDE) score and T Cells dysfunction score, which suggested a higher sensitive to immunotherapy. Moreover, high-AMRS group was also more sensitive to paclitaxel, cisplatin, and docetaxel.Conclusion: Overall, we constructed an AA-metabolism prognostic model, which provided a powerful prognostic predictor for the clinical treatment of pancreatic cancer

Nyelv, nyelvtörvény, nyelvtudomány

<p>4a, Forest plot on the associations between DM and bile leakage after hepatectomy. 4b, Forest plot on the associations between DM and ascites after hepatectomy. 4c, Forest plot on the associations between DM and liver decompensation after hepatectomy. DM, diabetes mellitus. The boxes and lines indicate the relative ratios (RRs) and their confidence intervals (CIs) on a log scale for each study. The pooled RR is represented by a diamond. The size of the black squares indicates the relative weight of each estimate.</p

Mechanism of the antiinflammatory effect of curcumin: PPAR- activation

Recommended by John P. Vanden Heuvel Curcumin, the phytochemical component in turmeric, is used as a dietary spice and a topical ointment for the treatment of inflammation in India for centuries. Curcumin (diferuloylmethane) is relatively insoluble in water, but dissolves in acetone, dimethylsulphoxide, and ethanol. Commercial grade curcumin contains 10-20% curcuminoids, desmethoxycurcumin, and bisdesmethoxycurcumin and they are as effective as pure curcumin. Based on a number of clinical studies in carcinogenesis, a daily oral dose of 3.6 g curcumin has been efficacious for colorectal cancer and advocates its advancement into Phase II clinical studies. In addition to the anticancer effects, curcumin has been effective against a variety of disease conditions in both in vitro and in vivo preclinical studies. The present review highlights the importance of curcumin as an anti-inflammatory agent and suggests that the beneficial effect of curcumin is mediated by the upregulation of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor-γ (PPAR-γ) activation