The present study aims to investigate the relationship between miR-19b-3p and esophageal cancer (ESCA), and to detect the effects of miR-19b-3p transferred by exosomes on the phenotype of EC9706 cells. The expression of miR-19b-3p was detected by starBase analysis and real-time quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR). The target genes of miR-19b-3p were predicted by TargetScan and further verified by luciferase analysis. The mRNA and protein expression levels of PTEN and EMT-related genes were detected by RT-qPCR and Western blotting. The effects of miR-19b-3p transferred by exosomes and its target genes on the apoptosis, migration and invasion of EC9706 cells were studied by establishing a co-culture model of donor cells. The expression of miR-19b-3p in ESCA plasma, cells and exosomes was significantly up-regulated. miR-19b-3p transferred by exosomes could significantly reduce EC9706 cells apoptosis rate, promote cell migration and invasion, and could target the inhibition of PTEN expression. PTEN overexpression promoted apoptosis, inhibited cell migration and invasion, down-regulated the expression of MMP-2 and vimentin, and up-regulated E-cadherin expression; however, these effects could be partially reversed by miR-19b-3p. In summary, our results reveal that miR-19b-3p transferred by exosomes can target PTEN to regulate ESCA biological functions in the receptor EC9706 cells.

Objective: This study aimed to describe the mechanism of exosome-derived miR-486-5p underlying the cell cycle and progression in lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD).Methods: Bioinformatics methods were applied for identifying the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in the GEO-LUAD dataset, predicting where the potential target miRNA was expressed and exploring the corresponding downstream target mRNA. qRT-PCR was conducted to detect the levels of the target genes in cancer cells. Thereafter, a series of in vitro experiments were performed for cell activities evaluation, including CCK-8, EdU, colony formation assay and transwell. Besides, Western blot was applied to determine the protein levels of the migration and invasion-related factors (NEK2, E-cadherin, N-cadherin, Vimentin, MMP-2, and MMP-9). Dual-luciferase reporter gene assay was employed for validating the targeted relationship between the target genes. Furthermore, nude mouse transplantation tumor experiment was conducted to further validate the role of the target miRNA in tumor development, and immunohistochemistry was used for Ki67 detection and TUNEL was applied for cell apoptosis assay.Results: miR-486-5p was observed to be enriched in serum exosomes, and seen to be significantly down-regulated in cancer tissues as well as in cancer serum exosomes. It was proven that exosomes could release miR-486-5p, thus regulating LUAD progression and affecting cell cycle. Moreover, NEK2 was identified as a target of miR-486-5p both in vivo and in vitro. Enrichment analysis revealed that NEK2 was mainly activated in cell cycle and mitosis-related pathways. Meanwhile, NEK2 was found to present significant difference in different TNM stages. Furthermore, rescue experiments indicated that the inhibitory effect of miR-486-5p overexpression on LUAD progression could be abrogated when miR-486-5p and NEK2 were simultaneously up-regulated.Conclusion: Exosome-derived miR-486-5p is responsible for cell cycle arrest as well as the inhibition of cell proliferation and metastasis in LUAD via targeting NEK2.

Helicobacter pylori (HP), a common microanaerobic bacteria that lives in the human mouth and stomach, is reported to infect ≈50% of the global population. The current diagnostic methods for HP are either invasive, time‐consuming, or harmful. Therefore, a noninvasive and label‐free HP diagnostic method needs to be developed urgently. Herein, reduced graphene oxide (rGO) is composited with different metal‐based materials to construct a graphene‐based electronic nose (e‐nose), which exhibits excellent sensitivity and cross‐reactive response to several gases in exhaled breath (EB). Principal component analysis (PCA) shows that four typical types of gases in EB can be well discriminated. Additionally, the potential of the e‐nose in label‐free detection of HP infection is demonstrated through the measurement and analysis of EB samples. Furthermore, a prototype of an e‐nose device is designed and constructed for automatic EB detection and HP diagnosis. The accuracy of the prototype machine integrated with the graphene‐based e‐nose can reach 92% and 91% in the training and validation sets, respectively. These results demonstrate that the highly sensitive graphene‐based e‐nose has great potential for the label‐free diagnosis of HP and may become a novel tool for non‐invasive disease screening and diagnosis.

Narrative review of emerging roles for AKT-mTOR signaling in cancer radioimmunotherapy Changxian Shen, Yuqi He, Qiang Chen, Haihua Feng, Terence M. Williams, Yuanzhi Lu, Zhengfu He