Exosomal LncRNAs and CircRNAs in lung cancer: Emerging regulators and potential therapeutic targets.

Lung cancer remains one of the most prevalent and lethal malignancies globally, characterized by high incidence and mortality rates among all cancers. The delayed diagnosis of lung cancer at intermediate to advanced stages frequently leads to suboptimal treatment outcomes. To improve the management of this disease, it is imperative to identify new, highly sensitive prognostic and diagnostic biomarkers. Exosomes, extracellular vesicles with a lipid-bilayer structure and a size range of 30-150 nm, are pivotal in intercellular communication and play significant roles in lung cancer progression. Non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs), including long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) and circular RNAs (circRNAs), are highly prevalent within exosomes and play a crucial role in various pathophysiological processes mediated by these extracellular vesicles. Beyond their established functions in miRNA and protein sequestration, these ncRNAs are involved in regulating translation and interactions within exosomes. Numerous studies have highlighted the importance of exosomal lncRNAs and circRNAs in influencing epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT), angiogenesis, proliferation, invasion, migration, and metastasis in lung cancer. Due to their unique functional characteristics, these molecules are promising therapeutic targets and biomarkers for diagnosis and prognosis. This review provides a succinct summary of the formation of exosomal lncRNAs and circRNAs, clarifies their biological roles, and thoroughly explains the mechanisms by which they participate in the progression of lung cancer. Finally, we discuss the potential clinical applications and challenges associated with exosomal lncRNAs and circRNAs in lung cancer.

Prediction of multiple types of drug interactions based on multi-scale fusion and dual-view fusion.

Potential drug-drug interactions (DDI) can lead to adverse drug reactions (ADR), and DDI prediction can help pharmacy researchers detect harmful DDI early. However, existing DDI prediction methods fall short in fully capturing drug information. They typically employ a single-view input, focusing solely on drug features or drug networks. Moreover, they rely exclusively on the final model layer for predictions, overlooking the nuanced information present across various network layers. To address these limitations, we propose a multi-scale dual-view fusion (MSDF) method for DDI prediction. More specifically, MSDF first constructs two views, topological and feature views of drugs, as model inputs. Then a graph convolutional neural network is used to extract the feature representations from each view. On top of that, a multi-scale fusion module integrates information across different graph convolutional layers to create comprehensive drug embeddings. The embeddings from the two views are summed as the final representation for classification. Experiments on two real-world datasets demonstrate that MSDF achieves higher accuracy than state-of-the-art methods, as the dual-view, multi-scale approach better captures drug characteristics.

[Lutein inhibits the adhesion, invasiveness and metastasis of human prostate cancer PC-3M cells].

OBJECTIVE: To explore the effects of lutein on the adhesion, invasiveness and metastasis of human prostate cancer PC-3M cells and its action mechanism. METHODS: We divided human prostate cancer PC-3M cells into a control, a low-dose lutein, a medium-dose lutein and a high-dose lutein group, and treated them with 0, 10, 20 and 40 µmol/L lutein, respectively. Then we examined the adhesion of the cells to matrix by cell adhesion assay and the changes in cell pseudopodia by Phalloidin staining, detected the expressions of paxillin, matrix metalloproteinase 2 (MMP-2), MMP-9, recombinant tissue inhibitors of metalloproteinase 1 (TIMP-1), E-cadherin, N-cadherin and vimentin by Western blot, determined the invasiveness and migration of the cells by scratch and Transwell assays, and observed their dynamic movement by high-intension imaging. RESULTS: Compared with the control, the lutein intervention groups showed significant reduction in the number of the cells adhered to matrix, the number of cell pseudopodia, the expressions of paxillin, MMP-2, MMP-9, N-cadherin and vimentin, the rates of migration, invasion and metastasis, and the distances of displacement and movement of the cells. However, the expressions of TIMP-1 and epithelial-mesenchymal transition-related E-cadherin were upregulated significantly. CONCLUSION: Lutein can inhibit cell adhesion, reduce the expressions of MMPs, and suppress cell invasion and migration by inhibiting the process of epithelial-mesenchymal transition.

Exosomes derived from human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells alleviate inflammatory bowel disease in mice through ubiquitination.

Exosomes released from mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have an anti-inflammatory effect and can repair tissue injuries. Ubiquitination plays an important role in the regulation of various biological functions, including the regulation of inflammation. However, it remains unknown whether exosomes from human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells (hucMSC-ex) may cure the mice of DSS-induced inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) through the ubiquitin modification. In this study, we aimed to investigate the therapeutic effect and probe the mechanism relating to ubiquitination underlying the hucMSC-ex treatment in DSS-induced IBD of mice. HucMSC-ex significantly improved the symptoms of IBD in mice. In the IBD group, the gene expression levels of TNF-α, IL-1ß, IL-6, NAe1, E2M and Uba3 dramatically increased while those of IL-10 and IP-10 decreased. The gene expression level in the group of hucMSC-ex treatment was adversed to that in the group of IBD. In the hucMSC-ex treated group, western blot results showed that the protein expressions of K48, K63 and FK2 have significantly decreased. Compared with that in the IBD mice, the mice treated by hucMSC-ex could recover the integrity of tissue structure. Our results indicated that exosomes from hucMSCs have profound effects on alleviating DSS-induced IBD and may exert their function by regulating the ubiquitin modification level.

Ubiquitination regulation of inflammatory responses through NF-κB pathway.

The development of inflammation is mutually affected with damaged DNA and the abnormal expression of protein modification. Ubiquitination, a way of protein modification, plays a key role in regulating various biological functions including inflammation responses. The ubiquitin enzymes and deubiquitinating enzymes (DUBs) jointly control the ubiquitination. The fact that various ubiquitin linkage chains control the fate of the substrate suggests that the regulatory mechanisms of ubiquitin enzymes are central for ubiquitination. In inflammation diseases, the pro-inflammatory transcription factor NF-κB regulates transcription of pro-labour mediators in response to inflammatory stimuli and expression of numerous genes that control inflammation which is associated with ubiquitination. The ubiquitination regulates NF-κB signaling pathway with many receptor families, including NOD-like receptors (NLR), Toll-like receptors (TLR) and RIG-I-like receptors (RLR), mainly by K63-linked polyubiquitin chains. In this review, we highlight the study of ubiquitination in the inflammatory signaling pathway including NF-κB signaling regulated by ubiquitin enzymes and DUBs. Furthermore, it is emphasized that the interaction of ubiquitin-mediated inflammatory signaling system accurately regulates the inflammatory responses.

Crosstalk between mesenchymal stem cells and macrophages in inflammatory bowel disease and associated colorectal cancer.

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) are attractive seed cells for immunotherapy, tissue engineering and regenerative medicine due to their self-renewal and multidirectional differentiation abilities, diverse immunoregulatory functions and ease of isolation from a wide range of tissues. MSCs exert their immunoregulatory effect on immune cells via cell-to-cell contact and paracrine mechanisms. In turn, MSCs can also be modulated by immune cells. Macrophages are constantly present in the mucosa of the intestinal tract of mammals and play an important role in the development and progression of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), a chronic and recurrent inflammatory disease of the gastrointestinal tract characterized by idiopathic mucosal inflammation. The increased morbidity and mortality of IBD have made it a disease hard to cure in the clinic. MSCs have emerged as an important tool for IBD therapy due to their abilities to differentiate into enterocyte-like cells and regulate inflammatory cells, especially macrophages. In this review, we discuss the recent advances in the interaction between MSCs and macrophages in diseases, with an emphasis on IBD. We propose that an optimized MSC-based therapy would provide a novel strategy for the treatment of IBD and the prevention of IBD-associated colorectal cancer (CRC).

Exosomes Derived from Human Umbilical Cord Mesenchymal Stem Cells Relieve Inflammatory Bowel Disease in Mice.

Exosomes secreted by mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have shown repairing effects on several tissue injury diseases. In this study, we aimed to investigate the effects of exosomes released from human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells (hucMSCs) on the treatment of dextran sulfate sodium- (DSS-) induced inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and to explore the underlying mechanism. We found that indocyanine green (ICG) labeled exosomes homed to colon tissues of IBD mice at 12 hours after injection. Exosomes significantly relieved the severity of IBD in mice as hucMSCs. The expression of IL-10 gene was increased while that of TNF-α, IL-1ß, IL-6, iNOS, and IL-7 genes was decreased in the colon tissues and spleens of exosomes-treated mice. Furthermore, the infiltration of macrophages into the colon tissues was decreased by exosome treatment in IBD mice. In addition, we provided evidence that in vitro coculture with exosomes inhibited the expression of iNOS and IL-7 in mouse enterocoelia macrophages. Moreover, we found that the expression of IL-7 was higher in the colon tissues of colitis patients than that of healthy controls. Our findings suggest that exosomes from hucMSCs have profound effects on alleviating DSS-induced IBD and may exert their impact through the modulation of IL-7 expression in macrophages.

Human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells alleviate inflammatory bowel disease through the regulation of 15-LOX-1 in macrophages.

OBJECTIVE: To investigate the role of human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells (hucMSCs) in the treatment of dextran sulfate sodium (DSS)-induced inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). RESULTS: ICG-hucMSCs homed to colon tissues of IBD mice 12 h after injection. The injection of hucMSCs significantly relieved the IBD symptoms and inflammatory cell infiltration. The expression of IL-10 gene increased while those of 15-LOX-1, TNF-α, IL-6, IL-1ß, and IP-10 genes decreased in colon tissues and spleens of hucMSCs-treated mice. The activation of STAT3 was inhibited in colon tissues and spleens of IBD mice that were treated with hucMSCs. In addition, the percentage of macrophages decreased in colon tissues and spleens of hucMSCs-treated IBD mice. Moreover, we provided evidence that in vitro co-culture with hucMSCs inhibited the expression of 15-LOX-1, IL-6 and p-STAT3 in mouse enterocoelia macrophages. CONCLUSIONS: HucMSCs alleviate DSS-induced IBD through the modulation of 15-LOX-1 in macrophages.