scholarly journals Wnt/β-catenin signaling in cancers and targeted therapies

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Fanyuan Yu ◽  
Changhao Yu ◽  
Feifei Li ◽  
Yanqin Zuo ◽  
Yitian Wang ◽  
...  

AbstractWnt/β-catenin signaling has been broadly implicated in human cancers and experimental cancer models of animals. Aberrant activation of Wnt/β-catenin signaling is tightly linked with the increment of prevalence, advancement of malignant progression, development of poor prognostics, and even ascendence of the cancer-associated mortality. Early experimental investigations have proposed the theoretical potential that efficient repression of this signaling might provide promising therapeutic choices in managing various types of cancers. Up to date, many therapies targeting Wnt/β-catenin signaling in cancers have been developed, which is assumed to endow clinicians with new opportunities of developing more satisfactory and precise remedies for cancer patients with aberrant Wnt/β-catenin signaling. However, current facts indicate that the clinical translations of Wnt/β-catenin signaling-dependent targeted therapies have faced un-neglectable crises and challenges. Therefore, in this study, we systematically reviewed the most updated knowledge of Wnt/β-catenin signaling in cancers and relatively targeted therapies to generate a clearer and more accurate awareness of both the developmental stage and underlying limitations of Wnt/β-catenin-targeted therapies in cancers. Insights of this study will help readers better understand the roles of Wnt/β-catenin signaling in cancers and provide insights to acknowledge the current opportunities and challenges of targeting this signaling in cancers.

Cancers ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 778 ◽  
Author(s):  
Halil Ibrahim Toy ◽  
Didem Okmen ◽  
Panagiota I. Kontou ◽  
Alexandros G. Georgakilas ◽  
Athanasia Pavlopoulou

Several studies suggest that upregulated expression of the long non-coding RNA HOX transcript antisense RNA (HOTAIR) is a negative predictive biomarker for numerous cancers. Herein, we performed a meta-analysis to further investigate the prognostic value of HOTAIR expression in diverse human cancers. To this end, a systematic literature review was conducted in order to select scientific studies relevant to the association between HOTAIR expression and clinical outcomes, including overall survival (OS), recurrence-free survival (RFS)/disease-free survival (DFS), and progression-free survival (PFS)/metastasis-free survival (MFS) of cancer patients. Collectively, 53 eligible studies including a total of 4873 patients were enrolled in the current meta-analysis. Pooled hazard ratios (HRs) with their corresponding 95% confidence intervals (CIs) were calculated to assess the relationship between HOTAIR and cancer patients’ survival. Elevated HOTAIR expression was found to be significantly associated with OS, RFS/DFS and PFS/MFS in diverse types of cancers. These findings were also corroborated by the results of bioinformatics analysis on overall survival. Therefore, based on our findings, HOTAIR could serve as a potential biomarker for the prediction of cancer patient survival in many different types of human cancers.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Liyuan Song ◽  
Xianhui Wang ◽  
Wang Cheng ◽  
Yi Wu ◽  
Min Liu ◽  
...  

Abstract Background In recent years, immunotherapies and targeted therapies contribute to population-level improvement in NSCLC cancer-specific survival, however, the two novel therapeutic options have mainly benefit patients containing mutated driven genes. Thus, to explore other potential genes related with immunity or targeted therapies may provide novel options to improve survival of lung cancer patients without mutated driven genes. CTSF is unique in human cysteine proteinases. Presently, CTSF has been detected in several cell lines of lung cancer, but its role in progression and prognosis of lung cancer remains unclear. Methods CTSF expression and clinical datasets of lung cancer patients were obtained from GTEx, TIMER, CCLE, THPA, and TCGA, respectively. Association of CTSF expression with clinicopathological parameters and prognosis of lung cancer patients was analyzed using UALCAN and Kaplan–Meier Plotter, respectively. LinkedOmics were used to analyze correlation between CTSF and CTSF co-expressed genes. Protein–protein interaction and gene–gene interaction were analyzed using STRING and GeneMANIA, respectively. Association of CTSF with molecular markers of immune cells and immunomodulators was analyzed with Immunedeconv and TISIDB, respectively. Results CTSF expression was currently only available for patients with NSCLC. Compared to normal tissues, CTSF was downregulated in NSCLC samples and high expressed CTSF was correlated with favorable prognosis of NSCLC. Additionally, CTSF expression was correlated with that of immune cell molecular markers and immunomodulators both in LUAD and LUSC. Noticeably, high expression of CTSF-related CTLA-4 was found to be associated with better OS of LUAD patients. Increased expression of CTSF-related LAG-3 was related with poor prognosis of LUAD patients while there was no association between CTSF-related PD-1/PD-L1 and prognosis of LUAD patients. Moreover, increased expression of CTSF-related CD27 was related with poor prognosis of LUAD patients while favorable prognosis of LUSC patients. Conclusions CTSF might play an anti-tumor effect via regulating immune response of NSCLC.


2019 ◽  
Vol 19 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chenghao Zhang ◽  
Xiaolei Ren ◽  
Jieyu He ◽  
Wanchun Wang ◽  
Chao Tu ◽  
...  

Abstract Background Cancer has been a worldwide health problem with a high risk of morbidity and mortality, however ideal biomarkers for effective screening and diagnosis of cancer patients are still lacking. Small nucleolar RNA host gene 16 (SNHG16) is newly identified lncRNA with abnormal expression in several human malignancies. However, its prognostic value remains controversial. This meta-analysis aimed to synthesize available data to clarify the association between SNHG16 expression levels and clinical prognosis value in multiple cancers. Methods Extensive literature retrieval was conducted to identify eligible studies, and data regarding SNHG16 expression levels on survival outcomes and clinicopathological features were extracted and pooled for calculation of the hazard ratios (HRs) or odds ratios (ORs) with 95% confidence intervals (CIs). Forest plots were applied to show the association between SNHG16 expression and survival prognosis. Additionally, The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) dataset was screened and extracted for validation of the results in this meta-analysis. Results A total of eight studies comprising 568 patients were included in the final meta-analysis according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria. In the pooled analysis, high SNHG16 expression significantly predicted worse overall survival (OS) in various cancers (HR = 1.87, 95% CI 1.54–2.26, P < 0.001), and recurrence-free survival (RFS) in bladder cancer (HR = 1.68, 95% CI 1.01–2.79, P = 0.045). Meanwhile, stratified analyses revealed that the survival analysis method, tumor type, sample size, and cut-off value did not alter the predictive value of SNHG16 for OS in cancer patients. In addition, compared to the low SNHG16 expression group, patients with high SNHG16 expression were more prone to worse clinicopathological features, such as larger tumor size, advanced clinical stage, lymph node metastasis (LNM) and distant metastasis (DM). Exploration of TCGA dataset further validated that the upregulated SNHG16 expression predicted unfavorable OS and disease-free survival (DFS) in cancer patients. Conclusions The present study implicated that aberrant expression of lncRNA SNHG16 was strongly associated with clinical survival outcomes in various cancers, and therefore might serve as a promising biomarker for predicting prognosis of human cancers.


Diagnostics ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 68
Author(s):  
Mário Ginja ◽  
Maria J. Pires ◽  
José M. Gonzalo-Orden ◽  
Fernanda Seixas ◽  
Miguel Correia-Cardoso ◽  
...  

The rat has been frequently used as a model to study several human diseases, including cancer. In many research protocols using cancer models, researchers find it difficult to perform several of the most commonly used techniques and to compare their results. Although the protocols for the study of carcinogenesis are based on the macroscopic and microscopic anatomy of organs, few studies focus on the use of imaging. The use of imaging modalities to monitor the development of cancer avoids the need for intermediate sacrifice to assess the status of induced lesions, thus reducing the number of animals used in experiments. Our work intends to provide a complete and systematic overview of rat prostate anatomy and imaging, facilitating the monitoring of prostate cancer development through different imaging modalities, such as ultrasonography, computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).


2010 ◽  
Vol 76 (3) ◽  
pp. 186-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Magné ◽  
Cyrus Chargari ◽  
Dhara MacDermed ◽  
Rosa Conforti ◽  
Lionel Védrine ◽  
...  

Cancers ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 2168
Author(s):  
Ludivine Raby ◽  
Pamela Völkel ◽  
Xuefen Le Bourhis ◽  
Pierre-Olivier Angrand

Zebrafish (Danio rerio) is an excellent model to study a wide diversity of human cancers. In this review, we provide an overview of the genetic and reverse genetic toolbox allowing the generation of zebrafish lines that develop tumors. The large spectrum of genetic tools enables the engineering of zebrafish lines harboring precise genetic alterations found in human patients, the generation of zebrafish carrying somatic or germline inheritable mutations or zebrafish showing conditional expression of the oncogenic mutations. Comparative transcriptomics demonstrate that many of the zebrafish tumors share molecular signatures similar to those found in human cancers. Thus, zebrafish cancer models provide a unique in vivo platform to investigate cancer initiation and progression at the molecular and cellular levels, to identify novel genes involved in tumorigenesis as well as to contemplate new therapeutic strategies.


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