The emerging role of PI3K inhibitors for solid tumour treatment and beyond.

Phosphoinositide 3-kinases (PI3Ks) play a central role in tumourigenesis with recurrent activating mutations of its p110α subunit (PIK3CA) identified in several tumours. Although several PI3K inhibitors are approved for haematological malignancies, only alpelisib was approved in solid tumours and for the treatment of PIK3CA-related overgrowth spectrum (PROS) syndrome. Traditional PI3K inhibitors inhibit both wild-type and mutant PI3K with almost equal potency, thus limiting their efficacy due to on-target toxicity. Since the initiation of phase I clinical trials investigating next generation allosteric mutant and isoform selective PIK3CA inhibitors, there has been a surge in interest in PIK3CA targeting in solid tumours. Preclinical characterisation of these compounds showed that maximal mutant protein inhibition fails to elicit metabolic and glucose homoeostasis dysregulation, one of the dose limiting toxicities of both selective and pan PI3K inhibitors. While extreme selectivity can be hypothesised to grant activity and safety advantage to these novel agents, on the other hand reduced benefit can be speculated for patients harbouring multiple or rare PIK3CA mutations. This review summarises the current understanding of PI3K alterations and the state-of-the-art treatment strategies in PI3K driven solid tumours, while also exploring the potential intrinsic and acquired resistance mechanisms to these agents, and the emerging role of mutant selective PIK3CA inhibitors.

The PCOS-NAFLD Multidisease Phenotype Occurred in Medaka Fish Four Generations after the Removal of Bisphenol A Exposure.

As a heterogeneous reproductive disorder, polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) can be caused by genetic, diet, and environmental factors. Bisphenol A (BPA) can induce PCOS and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) due to direct exposure; however, whether these phenotypes persist in future unexposed generations is not currently understood. In a previous study, we observed that transgenerational NAFLD persisted in female medaka for five generations (F4) after exposure to an environmentally relevant concentration (10 µg/L) of BPA. Here, we demonstrate PCOS in the same F4 generation female medaka that developed NAFLD. The ovaries contained immature follicles, restricted follicular progression, and degenerated follicles, which are characteristics of PCOS. Untargeted metabolomic analysis revealed 17 biomarkers in the ovary of BPA lineage fish, whereas transcriptomic analysis revealed 292 genes abnormally expressed, which were similar to human patients with PCOS. Metabolomic-transcriptomic joint pathway analysis revealed activation of the cancerous pathway, arginine-proline metabolism, insulin signaling, AMPK, and HOTAIR regulatory pathways, as well as upstream regulators esr1 and tgf signaling in the ovary. The present results suggest that ancestral BPA exposure can lead to PCOS phenotypes in the subsequent unexposed generations and warrant further investigations into potential health risks in future generations caused by initial exposure to EDCs.

Emerging Role of Plant-Based Bioactive Compounds as Therapeutics in Parkinson's Disease.

Neurological ailments, including stroke, Alzheimer's disease (AD), epilepsy, Parkinson's disease (PD), and other related diseases, have affected around 1 billion people globally to date. PD stands second among the common neurodegenerative diseases caused as a result of dopaminergic neuron loss in the midbrain's substantia nigra regions. It affects cognitive and motor activities, resulting in tremors during rest, slow movement, and muscle stiffness. There are various traditional approaches for the management of PD, but they provide only symptomatic relief. Thus, a survey for finding new biomolecules or substances exhibiting the therapeutic potential to patients with PD is the main focus of present-day research. Medicinal plants, herbal formulations, and natural bioactive molecules have been gaining much more attention in recent years as synthetic molecules orchestrate a number of undesired effects. Several in vitro, in vivo, and in silico studies in the recent past have demonstrated the therapeutic potential of medicinal plants, herbal formulations, and plant-based bioactives. Among the plant-based bioactives, polyphenols, terpenes, and alkaloids are of particular interest due to their potent anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and brain-health-promoting properties. Further, there are no concise, elaborated articles comprising updated mechanism-of-action-based reviews of the published literature on potent, recently investigated (2019-2023) medicinal plants, herbal formulations, and plant based-bioactive molecules, including polyphenols, terpenes, and alkaloids, as a method for the management of PD. Therefore, we designed the current review to provide an illustration of the efficacious role of various medicinal plants, herbal formulations, and bioactives (polyphenols, terpenes, and alkaloids) that can become potential therapeutics against PD with greater specificity, target approachability, bioavailability, and safety to the host. This information can be further utilized in the future to develop several value-added formulations and nutraceutical products to achieve the desired safety and efficacy for the management of PD.

Is histopathological examination of sleeve gastrectomy specimens necessary in areas endemic for gastric cancer?

Background: The value of histopathological examination of a laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy (LSG) specimen in areas endemic for Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) and gastric cancer is not known. We assessed the histopathological findings of LSG specimens to determine whether routine histopathological examination of these would be useful in patients with normal preoperative upper gastrointestinal endoscopy findings in an area endemic for gastric cancer. Methods: We did a retrospective analysis of the histopathological findings of LSG specimens in patients who underwent the procedure between March 2015 and March 2017. We ascertained the association of positive histopathological findings with the clinical profile of patients and preoperative upper gastrointestinal endoscopy findings. Results: Twenty-six patients (16 females) with a mean age of 37.5 years underwent LSG during the study period. On preoperative upper gastrointestinal endoscopy, 18 patients had unremarkable findings. Of the three patients with gastric or duodenal erosions on upper gastrointestinal endoscopy, two had H. pylori infection. On histopathological examination, 14 patients had unremarkable findings. Chronic gastritis with or without follicle formation was the most common finding (n=7). None of the patients with normal upper gastrointestinal endoscopy findings had significant histopathological findings or evidence of H. pylori infection. No significant association was found between age, gender, body mass index, smoking and alcohol intake with positive histopathological findings (p=0.64, 0.91, 0.90, 0.10 and 0.94, respectively). Conclusions: We did not find clinically important histopathological findings on routine examination of the LSG specimen in bariatric patients with normal preoperative upper gastrointestinal endoscopy findings.

Evaluation of some in vitro probiotic properties of Lactobacillus fermentum Strains.

This study aimed to check the in vitro probiotic properties of eleven Lactobacillus fermentum strains previously isolated from fermented dairy products and infant faeces. These cultures were tested for their tolerance to different pH such as 2.0, 2.5, 3.0, 3.5 and 6.5, bile salt hydrolysis and cell surface hydrophobicity. All the strains were persistent at pH 3.5 for 3 h whereas only faecal origin isolates such as L. fermentum BIF-19, BIF-20, BIF-18 and MTCC 8711 had shown considerable growth at pH 2.5. The strains NCDC-400, MTCC 8711, BIF-18, BIF-19 and BIF-20 showed slight to intense precipitation zone of bile salt hydrolase activity by agar plate assay. The strain L. fermentum BIF-19 exhibited best preliminary probiotic properties was selected for the adhesion to Caco-2 cell lines, which shows similar adhesion to that observed for standard probiotic Lactobacillus rhamnosus GG.

Heterogeneous CD3 expression levels in differing T cell subsets correlate with the in vivo anti-CD3-mediated T cell modulation.

The tolerogenic anti-CD3ε monoclonal Abs (anti-CD3) are promising compounds for the treatment of type 1 diabetes. Anti-CD3 administration induces transient T cell depletion both in preclinical and in clinical studies. Notably, the said depletion mainly affects CD4(+) but not CD8(+) T cells. Moreover, type 1 diabetes reversal in preclinical models is accompanied by the selective expansion of CD4(+)Foxp3(+) T regulatory (Treg) cells, which are fundamental for the long-term maintenance of anti-CD3-mediated tolerance. The mechanisms that lead to this immune-shaping by affecting mainly CD4(+) T effector cells while sparing CD4(+)Foxp3(+) Treg cells have still to be fully elucidated. This study shows that CD3 expression levels differ from one T cell subset to another. CD4(+)Foxp3(-) T cells contain higher amounts of CD3 molecules than do CD4(+)Foxp3(+) and CD8(+) T cells in both mice and humans. The said differences correlate with the anti-CD3-mediated immune resetting that occurs in vivo after anti-CD3 administration in diabetic NOD mice. Additionally, transcriptome analysis demonstrates that CD4(+)Foxp3(+) Treg cells are significantly less responsive than are CD4(+)Foxp3(-) T cells to anti-CD3 treatment at a molecular level. Thus, heterogeneity in CD3 expression seems to confer to the various T cell subsets differing susceptibility to the in vivo tolerogenic anti-CD3-mediated modulation. These data shed new light on the molecular mechanism that underlies anti-CD3-mediated immune resetting and thus may open new opportunities to improve this promising treatment.

Dynamic regulation of the transcription initiation landscape at single nucleotide resolution during vertebrate embryogenesis.

Spatiotemporal control of gene expression is central to animal development. Core promoters represent a previously unanticipated regulatory level by interacting with cis-regulatory elements and transcription initiation in different physiological and developmental contexts. Here, we provide a first and comprehensive description of the core promoter repertoire and its dynamic use during the development of a vertebrate embryo. By using cap analysis of gene expression (CAGE), we mapped transcription initiation events at single nucleotide resolution across 12 stages of zebrafish development. These CAGE-based transcriptome maps reveal genome-wide rules of core promoter usage, structure, and dynamics, key to understanding the control of gene regulation during vertebrate ontogeny. They revealed the existence of multiple classes of pervasive intra- and intergenic post-transcriptionally processed RNA products and their developmental dynamics. Among these RNAs, we report splice donor site-associated intronic RNA (sRNA) to be specific to genes of the splicing machinery. For the identification of conserved features, we compared the zebrafish data sets to the first CAGE promoter map of Tetraodon and the existing human CAGE data. We show that a number of features, such as promoter type, newly discovered promoter properties such as a specialized purine-rich initiator motif, as well as sRNAs and the genes in which they are detected, are conserved in mammalian and Tetraodon CAGE-defined promoter maps. The zebrafish developmental promoterome represents a powerful resource for studying developmental gene regulation and revealing promoter features shared across vertebrates.

Age-related changes in the brain antioxidant status: modulation by dietary supplementation of Decalepis hamiltonii and physical exercise.

The synergistic effects of physical exercise and diet have profound benefits on brain function. The present study was aimed to determine the effects of exercise and Decalepis hamiltonii (Dh) on age-related responses on the antioxidant status in discrete regions of rat brain. Male Wistar albino rats of 4 and 18 months old were orally supplemented with Dh extract and swim trained at 3 % intensity for 30 min/day, 5 days/week, for a period of 30 days. Supplementation of 100 mg Dh aqueous extract/kg body weight and its combination with exercise significantly elevated the antioxidant enzyme activities irrespective of age. Age-related and region-specific changes were observed in superoxide levels, and protein carbonyl and malondialdehyde contents, and were found to be decreased in both trained and supplemented groups. Levels of total thiols, protein, and nonprotein thiols decreased with age and significantly increased in the SW-T(+100 mg) groups. Our results demonstrated that the interactive effects of two treatments enhanced the antioxidant status and decreased the risk of protein and lipid oxidation in the rat brain.

Direct ChIP-Seq significance analysis improves target prediction.

BACKGROUND: Chromatin immunoprecipitation followed by sequencing of protein-bound DNA fragments (ChIP-Seq) is an effective high-throughput methodology for the identification of context specific DNA fragments that are bound by specific proteins in vivo. Despite significant progress in the bioinformatics analysis of this genome-scale data, a number of challenges remain as technology-dependent biases, including variable target accessibility and mappability, sequence-dependent variability, and non-specific binding affinity must be accounted for. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION: We introduce a nonparametric method for scoring consensus regions of aligned immunoprecipitated DNA fragments when appropriate control experiments are available. Our method uses local models for null binding; these are necessary because binding prediction scores based on global models alone fail to properly account for specialized features of genomic regions and chance pull downs of specific DNA fragments, thus disproportionally rewarding some genomic regions and decreasing prediction accuracy. We make no assumptions about the structure or amplitude of bound peaks, yet we show that our method outperforms leading methods developed using either global or local null hypothesis models for random binding. We test prediction performance by comparing analyses of ChIP-seq, ChIP-chip, motif-based binding-site prediction, and shRNA assays, showing high reproducibility, binding-site enrichment in predicted target regions, and functional regulation of predicted targets. CONCLUSIONS: Given appropriate controls, a direct nonparametric method for identifying transcription-factor targets from ChIP-Seq assays may lead to both higher sensitivity and higher specificity, and should be preferred or used in conjunction with methods that use parametric models for null binding.

Food protein-derived bioactive peptides in management of type 2 diabetes.

BACKGROUND: Type 2 diabetes (T2D), one of the major common human health problems, is growing at an alarming rate around the globe. Alpha-glucosidase and dipeptidyl peptidase IV (DPP-IV) enzymes play a significant role in development of T2D. Hence, reduction or inhibition of their activity can be one of the important strategies in management of T2D. Studies in the field of bioactive peptides have shown that dietary proteins could be natural source of alpha-glucosidase and DPP-IV inhibitory peptides. PURPOSE: The purpose of this review is to provide an overview of food protein-derived peptides as potential inhibitors of alpha-glucosidase and DPP-IV with major focus on milk proteins. METHODS: Efforts have been made to review the available information in literature on the relationship between food protein-derived peptides and T2D. This review summarizes the current data on alpha-glucosidase and dipeptidyl peptidase IV inhibitory bioactive peptides derived from proteins and examines the potential value of these peptides in the treatment and prevention of T2D. In addition, the proposed modes of inhibition of peptide inhibitors are also discussed. RESULTS: Studies revealed that milk and other food proteins-derived bioactive peptides play a vital role in controlling T2D through several mechanisms, such as the satiety response, regulation of incretin hormones, insulinemia levels, and reducing the activity of carbohydrate degrading digestive enzymes. CONCLUSIONS: The bioactive peptides could be used in prevention and management of T2D through functional foods or nutraceutical supplements. Further clinical trials are necessary to validate the findings of in vitro studies and to confirm the efficiency of these peptides for applications.