VNP20009-Abvec-Igκ-MIIP suppresses ovarian cancer progression by modulating Ras/MEK/ERK signaling pathway.

Ovarian cancer poses a significant threat to women's health, with conventional treatment methods encountering numerous limitations, and the emerging engineered bacterial anti-tumor strategies offer newfound hope for ovarian cancer treatment. In this study, we constructed the VNP20009-Abvec-Igκ-MIIP (VM) engineered strain and conducted initial assessments of its in vitro growth performance and the expression capability of migration/invasion inhibitory protein (MIIP). Subsequently, ID8 ovarian cancer cells and mouse cancer models were conducted to investigate the impact of VM on ovarian cancer. Our results revealed that the VM strain demonstrated superior growth performance, successfully invaded ID8 ovarian cancer cells, and expressed MIIP, consequently suppressing cell proliferation and migration. Moreover, VM specifically targeted tumor sites and expressed MIIP which further reduced the tumor volume of ovarian cancer mice (p < 0.01), via the downregulation of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), Ras, p-MEK, and p-ERK. The downregulation of the PI3K/AKT signaling pathway and the decrease in Bcl-2/Bax levels also indicated VM's apoptotic potency on ovarian cancer cells. In summary, our research demonstrated that VM exhibits promising anti-tumor effects both in vitro and in vivo, underscoring its potential for clinical treatment of ovarian cancer. KEY POINTS: • This study has constructed an engineered strain of Salmonella typhimurium capable of expressing anticancer proteins • The engineered bacteria can target and colonize tumor sites in vivo • VM can inhibit the proliferation, migration, and invasion of ovarian cancer cells.

Current Opinions on the Relationship Between CMTM Family and Hepatocellular Carcinoma.

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a typically malignant tumor in the digestive system. The mortality of HCC ranks third place in the world, second only to lung cancer and colorectal cancer. For the characteristics of high invasiveness, high metastasis, high recurrence rate as well as short survival time, HCC treatment has always been difficult in clinical practice. Many causes have contributed to the appearance of these features, including insidious onset, high degree of malignancy, lack of effective early molecular diagnostic markers, and disease prediction models. The human chemokine-like factor superfamily (CMTMs) is a new gene family consisting of CKLF and CMTM1-CMTM8. CMTMs have a marvel domain which can activate and chemotaxis immune cells. Many studies have reported that CMTMs are involved in the regulation of cell growth and development, and play an important role in the malignant progression of the immune system and reproductive system, especially in the development of tumors. In this review, we summarized the structure and function of the human CMTMs, the relationship between its family members and HCC, the prognostic value, potential functions, and mechanisms in HCC. CMTMs could provide a new diagnostic and therapeutic target in clinical practice for patients with HCC.

High-resolution and large-strain distributed dynamic sensor based on Brillouin and Rayleigh scattering.

A wide-dynamic-range and high-resolution optical fiber sensor based on Brillouin and Rayleigh scattering is proposed, which merges frequency-scanning phase-sensitive optical time-domain reflectometry (Φ-OTDR) and Brillouin optical time domain analysis (BOTDA) via an adaptive signal corrector (ASC). The ASC suppresses the accumulated error of Φ-OTDR with the reference of BOTDA, which breaks through the measurement range limitation of Φ-OTDR so that the proposed sensor can perform a high-resolution measurement in a wide dynamic range. Its measurement range is determined by BOTDA, and can reach the limitation of optical fiber, while the resolution is limited by Φ-OTDR. In proof-of-concept experiments, a maximum strain variation of up to 302.9 µÉ› is measured with a resolution of 5.5 nɛ. Furthermore, with an ordinary single-mode fiber, high-resolution dynamic pressure monitoring in the range from 20 MP to 0.29 MPa is also demonstrated with 0.14-kPa resolution. This research represents the first time, to the best of our knowledge, that a solution for merging data from a Brillouin sensor and a Rayleigh sensor which achieves the advantages of the two sensors at the same time has been realized.