Listeriosis is a fatal infection for fetuses and newborns with two clinical main morbidities in the neonatal period, meningitis and diffused cutaneous lesions. In this study, we vaccinated pregnant females with two gold glyconanoparticles (GNP) loaded with two peptides, listeriolysin peptide 91–99 (LLO91–99) or glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase 1–22 peptide (GAPDH1–22). Neonates born to vaccinated mothers were free of bacteria and healthy, while non-vaccinated mice presented clear brain affections and cutaneous diminishment of melanocytes. Therefore, these nanoparticle vaccines are effective measures to offer pregnant mothers at high risk of listeriosis interesting therapies that cross the placenta.
1 December 2014 in Pathology - Research and Practice
Despite the progress achieved in the treatment of breast cancer, there are still many unsolved clinical issues, being the diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment of papillary diseases, one of the highest challenges. Because of its unpredictable clinical behavior, treatment of intraductal papilloma has generated a great controversy. Even though considered as a benign lesion, it presents high rate of malignant recurrence. This is the reason why there are clinicians supporting a complete excision of the lesion, while others support an only expectant follow-up. Previous results of our group suggested that procollagen 11 alpha 1 (pro-COL11A1) expression correlates with infiltrating phenotype in breast lesions. We analyzed the correlation between expression of pro-COL11A1 in intraductal papilloma and their risk of malignant recurrence. Immunohistochemistry of pro-COL11A1 was performed in 62 samples of intraductal papilloma. Ten out 11 cases relapsed as carcinoma presents positive staining for COL11A1, while just 17 out of 51 cases with benign behaviour present immunostaining. There were significant differences () when comparing patients with malignant recurrence versus nonmalignant relapse patients. These data suggest that pro-COL11A1 expression is a highly sensitive biomarker to predict malignant relapse of intraductal papilloma and it can be used as indicative factor for prevention programs.
The survival rate in lung cancer remains stubbornly low and there is an urgent need for the identification of new therapeutic targets. Last decade’s research has evidenced a clear role of chromatin structure in cancer development and several members of the SWI/SNF chromatin remodeling complexes have been described altered in different tumor types. Nevertheless, the precise mechanisms of their impact on cancer progression, as well as the application of this knowledge to cancer patient management are largely unknown.In this study, we have performed targeted sequencing of a cohort of lung cancer patients on genes involved in chromatin structure, as well as functional experiments to identify the molecular mechanisms linking alterations of chromatin remodeling genes and tumor development.We have identified ARID2 production loss in 20% of lung cancer patients. Additionally, we have shown that ARID2-deficiency provokes profound chromatin structural changes, alters the transcriptional programme and impairs DNA repair which bolster the proliferative and metastatic potential of the cells both in vitro and in vivo. Moreover, we have demonstrated that ARID2 deficiency significantly affects the sensitivity of the cells to PARP inhibition.All these results support that ARID2 is a bona-fide tumor suppressor gene in lung cancer that might be exploited therapeutically.
(1) Background: Focal and segmental glomerulosclerosis (FSGS) is a pattern of injury that results from podocyte loss in the setting of a wide variety of injurious mechanisms. These include both acquired and genetic as well as primary and secondary causes, or a combination thereof, without optimal therapy, and a high rate of patients develop end-stage renal disease (ESRD). Genetic studies have helped improve the global understanding of FSGS syndrome; thus, we hypothesize that patients with primary FSGS may have underlying alterations in adhesion molecules or extracellular matrix glycoproteins related to previously unreported mutations that may be studied through next-generation sequencing (NGS). (2) Methods: We developed an NGS panel with 29 genes related to adhesion and extracellular matrix glycoproteins. DNA was extracted from twenty-three FSGS patients diagnosed by renal biopsy; (3) Results: The average number of accumulated variants in FSGS patients was high. We describe the missense variant ITGB3c.1199G>A, which is considered pathogenic; in addition, we discovered the nonsense variant CDH1c.499G>T, which lacks a Reference SNP (rs) Report and is considered likely pathogenic. (4) Conclusions: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first account of a high rate of change in extracellular matrix glycoproteins and adhesion molecules in individuals with adult-onset FSGS. The combined effect of all these variations may result in a genotype that is vulnerable to the pathogenesis of glomerulopathy.