Dysregulation of MAD2L1/CAMK2A/PTTG1 Gene Cluster Maintains the Stemness Characteristics of Uterine Corpus Endometrial Carcinoma / 中国医学科学院学报

Objective To study the stemness characteristics of uterine corpus endometrial carcinoma(UCEC)and its potential regulatory mechanism.Methods Transcriptome sequencing data of UCEC was obtained from The Cancer Genome Atlas.Gene expression profile was normalized by edgeR package in R3.5.1.A one-class logistic regression machine learning algorithm was employed to calculated the mRNA stemness index(mRNAsi)of each UCEC sample.Then,the prognostic significance of mRNAsi and candidate genes was evaluated by survminer and survival packages.The high-frequency sub-pathways mining approach(HiFreSP)was used to identify the prognosis-related sub-pathways enriched with differentially expressed genes(DEGs).Subsequently,a gene co-expression network was constructed using WGCNA package,and the key gene modules were analyzed.The clusterProfiler package was adopted to the function annotation of the modules highly correlated with mRNAsi.Finally,the Human Protein Atlas(HPA)was retrieved for immunohistochemical validation.Results The mRNAsi of UCEC samples was significantly higher than that of normal tissues(

Phenotype-based primary screening for drugs promoting neuronal subtype differentiation in embryonic stem cells with light microscope / 浙江大学学报·医学版

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To set up a platform for phenotype-based primary screening of drug candidates promoting neuronal subtype differentiation in embryonic stem cells (ES) with light microscope.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>Hanging drop culture 4-/4+ method was employed to harvest the cells around embryoid body (EB) at differentiation endpoint. Morphological evaluation for neuron-like cells was performed with light microscope. Axons for more than three times of the length of the cell body were considered as neuron-like cells. The compound(s) that promote neuron-like cells was further evaluated. Icariin (ICA, 10(-6)mol/L) and Isobavachin (IBA, 10(-7)mol/L) were selected to screen the differentiation-promoting activity on ES cells. Immunofluorescence staining with specific antibodies (ChAT, GABA) was used to evaluate the neuron subtypes.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>The cells treated with IBA showed neuron-like phenotype, but the cells treated with ICA did not exhibit the morphological changes. ES cells treated with IBA was further confirmed to be cholinergic and GABAergic neurons.</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>Phenotypic screening with light microscope for molecules promoting neuronal differentiation is an effective method with advantages of less labor and material consuming and time saving, and false-positive results derived from immunofluorescence can be avoided. The method confirms that IBA is able to facilitate ES cells differentiating into neuronal cells, including cholinergic neurons and GABAergic neurons.</p>