INFORMATION:
In addition to Dr. Liu, the research team included LSU Health New Orleans' Dr. Hui Lyu, as well as Drs. Liyun Luo, Zhijie Zhang, Ni Qiu, Li Ling, Xiaoting Jia, Ying Song, Hongsheng Li, Jiansheng Li, Hao Liu, Zhimin He, and Guopei Zheng from Guangzhou Medical University, Guangzhou, Guangdong, China.
This study was supported by the LSU Health New Orleans Stanley S. Scott Cancer Center, the National Natural Science Foundation of China, Guangdong Natural Science Funds for Distinguished Young Scholars, Guangdong Natural Science Funds, Guangdong Special Support Program, Guangzhou Key Medical Discipline Construction Project Fund, and Science and Technology Program of Guangzhou.
LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans educates Louisiana's health care professionals. The state's flagship health sciences university, LSU Health New Orleans includes a School of Medicine with branch campuses in Baton Rouge and Lafayette, the state's only School of Dentistry, Louisiana's only public School of Public Health, and Schools of Allied Health Professions, Nursing, and Graduate Studies. LSU Health New Orleans faculty take care of patients in public and private hospitals and clinics throughout the region. In the vanguard of biosciences research in a number of areas in a worldwide arena, the LSU Health New Orleans research enterprise generates jobs and enormous economic impact. LSU Health New Orleans faculty have made lifesaving discoveries and continue to work to prevent, advance treatment, or cure disease. To learn more, visit http://www.lsuhsc.edu, http://www.twitter.com/LSUHealthNO, or http://www.facebook.com/LSUHSC.
Study finds mechanism leading to herceptin resistance and Rx approach to reverse it
2021-05-13
(Press-News.org) New Orleans, LA - Research conducted by an international team of scientists discovered a mechanism that leads to Herceptin resistance, representing a significant clinical obstacle to successfully treating HER2-positive breast cancer. They also identified a new approach to potentially overcome it. The work is published online in Nature Communications, available here.
"This work attempts to understand why some HER2-positive breast cancer patients do not benefit from treatment with Herceptin, which is a generally effective HER2-targeted therapy," explains Bolin Liu, MD, Professor of Genetics at LSU Health New Orleans' School of Medicine and Stanley S. Scott Cancer Center.
The researchers found increased signaling by IGF2/IRS1 (genes involved in regulating cell proliferation, growth, migration, differentiation and survival) in the HER2-positive breast cancer cells poorly responding to Herceptin. Further studies showed that disruption of a negative feedback loop formed by an important protein, FOXO3a, and several miRNAs that are controlled by FOXO3a causes abnormal activation of the IGF2/IRS1 signal, thereby leading to Herceptin resistance.
"Resistance to Herceptin frequently occurs and currently represents a major clinical challenge for successful treatment of HER2-positive breast cancer," notes Dr. Liu. "Data presented in the study not only improve our understanding of the molecular mechanism through which IGF-1R signaling activation leads to Herceptin resistance, but also promote identification of precision therapies to reverse the resistance phenotype."
The researchers write, "Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths in women worldwide. HER2-positive breast cancer is defined as a breast cancer subtype with amplified and/or overexpressed HER2 (or erbB2) gene. Amplification/overexpression of HER2 is observed in approximately 20-25% of breast cancers and is significantly associated with poor prognosis in breast cancer patients. Herceptin (or trastuzumab), a humanized anti-HER2 monoclonal antibody (Ab), is an effective HER2-targeted therapy against early and metastatic HER2-positive breast cancers. It has dramatically improved the survival of breast cancer patients with HER2-positive tumors, but not all HER2-positive breast cancers respond to Herceptin-based regimens. To date, we lack validated biomarkers predictive for Herceptin response."
"Our results may provide new avenues to identify useful biomarkers predictive for Herceptin efficacy and facilitate the development of novel approaches to enhance HER2-targeted therapy, thereby improving the survival of refractory breast cancer patients," Dr. Liu concludes.
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
How widespread is lemur and fossa meat consumption?
2021-05-13
MAROANTSETRA, Madagascar (May 13, 2021) - A new study by WCS (Wildlife Conservation Society) looks at the prevalence of human consumption of lemur and fossa (Madagascar's largest predator) in villages within and around Makira Natural Park, northeastern Madagascar, providing up-to-date estimates of the percentage of households who eat meat from these protected species.
Authors from the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) describe their findings in the journal Conservation Science and Practice. In Madagascar, the consumption of endangered and protected species, in particular lemurs, ...
Man's best friend in life and death: Pet dog brain banking supports aging research
2021-05-13
Two recent papers from Hungarian researchers highlight the so far underrated relevance of pet dog biobanking in molecular research and introduce their initiative to make pioneering steps in this field. The Hungarian Canine Brain and Tissue Bank (CBTB) was established by the research team of the Senior Family Dog Project in 2017, following the examples of human tissue banks. In a recent paper, the team reports findings, which would not have been possible without the CBTB, and may augment further progress in dog aging and biomarker research.
Even though dogs have a much shorter average lifespan than humans, the aging path of the two species has remarkable similarities. Hence our best friends have attracted the attention ...
Molecular alteration may be cause -- not consequence -- of heart failure
2021-05-13
Clinicians and scientists have long observed that cells in overstressed hearts have high levels of the simple sugar O-GlcNAc modifying thousands of proteins within cells. Now, researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine have found evidence in mouse experiments that these excess sugars could well be a cause, not merely a consequence or marker of heart failure.
Their research found that elevated levels of O-GlcNAc made mice more prone to heart failure, but lowering levels of O-GlcNAc restored the animals' risk of death and heart function to normal. Together, the investigators say, the new findings, described online in the April ...
HSS researchers find duloxetine may reduce opioid use after total knee replacement
2021-05-13
In a study conducted by researchers at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS), cumulative opioid use was reduced by 30% in a patient group that received duloxetine after total knee arthroplasty (TKA) compared with patients who received placebo. Patients who received duloxetine also reported higher pain management satisfaction and less pain interference with mood, walking, normal sleep, and work activities. These findings were presented at the 2021 Spring American Society of Regional Anesthesia and Pain Medicine (ASRA) Annual Meeting.1
Studies have demonstrated that many patients report joint pain two weeks after ...
Scientists show immune cells change behavior unexpectedly to instigate psoriasis lesions
2021-05-13
Millions of people suffer from psoriasis, a chronic, autoimmune disorder that causes scaly patches on the skin and often precedes psoriatic arthritis. While no cure exists, treatments range from topical creams to injected medications that block inflammation. To improve treatment options, scientists need to better understand the dysregulation of the immune system that leads to these lesions.
Using advanced computational genomic analysis of immune cells from mouse models, a researcher at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering (PME) at the University of Chicago and her collaborators ...
Ticking upward: MU researcher studies rise of tick-borne diseases in Midwest
2021-05-13
COLUMBIA, Mo. - When Ram Raghavan heard from a former colleague at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that a 7-year-old girl had died from Rocky Mountain spotted fever as the result of a tick bite, he thought of his own daughter, also 7 years old at the time, and the potentially fatal danger posed to vulnerable populations by tick-borne diseases.
Now a professor at the University of Missouri College of Veterinary Medicine and School of Health Professions, Raghavan is an epidemiologist studying how ticks, mosquitos and other arthropods spread disease that impact people, pets and livestock over time in various geographical regions.
In a recent study, the most comprehensive of its kind in the Midwest region of the United States, Raghavan and former graduate ...
Evaluation of the diagnostic criteria for anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis in children
2021-05-13
Anti-NMDA receptor (NMDAR) encephalitis was first reported to develop in female young adults with ovarian teratoma. However, another study with a larger cohort reported that more than one-third of all patients with anti-NMDAR encephalitis were aged under 18 years, suggesting that this encephalitis might be more common in children than originally expected.
A clinical diagnostic approach to autoimmune encephalitis was proposed in 2016, and included diagnostic criteria for probable and definite anti-NMDAR encephalitis. For a diagnosis of probable anti-NMDAR encephalitis, the criteria require rapid onset ( END ...
Domino-like crystallization of glass
2021-05-13
Tokyo, Japan - Materials in a glassy state are everywhere in our lives and have contributed to humanity for many years. Today, they play a critical role in various technologies, including optical fibers. Although we believe that glass is highly stable, it sometimes crystallizes, resulting in loss of transparency and isotropy, essential characteristics of glass, which has been a significant problem in industrial applications. The reason why crystallization occurs in a solid-state with almost no molecular movement has been a great mystery. Its understanding may help to prevent or optimize crystal growth at deep supercooling.
In a study recently published in Nature Materials, researchers ...
Jab-free dengue immunity could be just a click away
2021-05-13
A dengue virus vaccine candidate has passed an important milestone, with promising results in animal model testing providing hope to the 390 million people infected every year.
The University of Queensland-developed vaccine candidate, applied to the skin via the high-density microarray patch (HD-MAP), has produced a protective immune response in dengue-infected mice.
UQ PhD candidate Jovin Choo said the result could lead to a readily administered vaccine that could help halt the devastation of dengue fever globally.
"Dengue is the most significant mosquito-borne viral disease in the world's ...
Quantum machine learning hits a limit
2021-05-13
LOS ALAMOS, N.M., May 12, 2021--A new theorem from the field of quantum machine learning has poked a major hole in the accepted understanding about information scrambling.
"Our theorem implies that we are not going to be able to use quantum machine learning to learn typical random or chaotic processes, such as black holes. In this sense, it places a fundamental limit on the learnability of unknown processes," said Zoe Holmes, a post-doc at Los Alamos National Laboratory and coauthor of the paper describing the work published today in Physical Review Letters.
"Thankfully, because most physically interesting processes are sufficiently simple or structured so that they do not resemble ...