Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer among women worldwide, and the rates of both new cases and deaths have increased over the past two decades. The aim of the study was to identify and val Show more
Breast cancer is the most common form of cancer among women worldwide, and the rates of both new cases and deaths have increased over the past two decades. The aim of the study was to identify and validate molecular pathways that could potentially be targeted for therapeutic interventions. The bioinformatics resource WebGestalt was used to determine the functional annotation of the Gene Ontology, as well as enrichment analysis of Reactome and KEGG pathways in 2023-2024. GeneMANIA, a server for assessing protein-gene interactions, co-localization, pathways, co-expression, and protein-domain similarity of target genes and their interacting genes, was evaluated via this web tool. GEO was also used to determine mRNA expression levels in BRCA individuals. R packages were used to screen for differentially expressed genes for both datasets. On the other hand, the open cancer resources GENT2 TNMPlot, UCSCXena, ENCORI platform, BioXpress, OncoDB, OncoMX, and GEPIA2 were used to measure the differential expression of mRNAs in BRCA patients. Among the genes analyzed, matrix metalloproteinase-9 ( The results predict that the hub genes correlated with angiogenesis may serve as potential therapeutic targets or could be biomarkers for breast cancer. Show less
Anhedonia or inability to experience pleasure is the sign of various neuropsychiatric conditions. Current treatment options do not provide adequate control of anhedonia. The present study was conducte Show more
Anhedonia or inability to experience pleasure is the sign of various neuropsychiatric conditions. Current treatment options do not provide adequate control of anhedonia. The present study was conducted to evaluate the protective effects of valproic acid (VPA) as a nonspecific histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitor to reverse the effects of stress on induction of anhedonia and explore possible mechanisms. To induce anhedonia, a rat model of chronic unpredictable mild stress (CUMS) was established. Animals were assigned into no stress, stress (6 weeks of CUMS) and two treatment groups. VPA treatment was carried out for 4 continuous weeks (200 mg/kg/day). Behavioral assessments were performed using sucrose consumption (SCT) and new object recognition (NOR) tests. The expression of genes was evaluated using qRT-PCR. The cell density was determined using Nissl staining. Rats with CUMS showed depressive-like behaviors and impaired memory performance compared with the non-stressed group (p < 0.01). Moreover, they had significantly higher levels of HDAC3 and MC4R expression in the nucleus accumbens (NAc) compared to the non-stressed group (p < 0.01). The NAc cell density was significantly higher in the non-stressed rats (p < 0.05). Corticosterone plasma level was increased in the CUMS compared to the non-stressed group (p < 0.05). In the CUMS + VPA subgroup, the corticosterone (CORT) plasma level was lower compared with the CUMS + Saline and/or the CUMS groups (p < 0.05). These findings suggest that VPA can improve anhedonia and stress. Although the protective effect of VPA might link to decreasing HDAC3 and MC4R genes expression in NAc. Show less
Osteosarcoma (OS) is the most common primary malignant tumor of the bone, and pulmonary metastasis is the most frequent cause of OS mortality. The aim of this study was to discover and characterize ge Show more
Osteosarcoma (OS) is the most common primary malignant tumor of the bone, and pulmonary metastasis is the most frequent cause of OS mortality. The aim of this study was to discover and characterize genetic networks differentially expressed in metastatic OS. Expression profiling of OS tumors, and subsequent supervised network analysis, was performed to discover genetic networks differentially activated or organized in metastatic OS compared to localized OS. Broad trends among the profiles of metastatic tumors include aberrant activity of intracellular organization and translation networks, as well as disorganization of metabolic networks. The differentially activated PRKCε-RASGRP3-GNB2 network, which interacts with the disorganized DLG2 hub, was also found to be differentially expressed among OS cell lines with differing metastatic capacity in xenograft models. PRKCε transcript was more abundant in some metastatic OS tumors; however the difference was not significant overall. In functional studies, PRKCε was not found to be involved in migration of M132 OS cells, but its protein expression was induced in M112 OS cells following IGF-1 stimulation. Show less