Breast Cancer Transcriptional Regulatory Network Reprogramming by using the CRISPR/Cas9 system: An Oncogenetics Perspective

: Breast cancer (BC) is the second most commonly diagnosed cancer in the world. BC develops due to dysregulation of transcriptional profiles, substantial interpatient variations, genetic mutations, and dysregulation of signaling pathways in breast cells. These events are regulated by many genes such as BRCA1/2, PTEN, TP53, mTOR, TERT, AKT, PI3K and others genes. Treatment options for BC remain a hurdle, which warrants a comprehensive understanding that establishes an interlinking connection between these genes in BC tumorigenesis. Consequently, there is an increasing demand for alternative treatment approaches and the design of more effective treatments. In this regard, it is crucial to build the corresponding transcriptional regulatory networks governing BC by using advanced genetic tools and techniques. In the past, several molecular editing technologies have been used to edit genes with several limitations. Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats (CRISPR)/CRISPR Associated Protein 9 (CRISPR/Cas9) recently received a profound attention due to its potential in biomedical and therapeutic applications. Here, we review the role of various molecular signalling pathways dysregulated in BC development such as PTEN/PI3K/AKT/mTOR as well as BRCA1/BRCA2/TP53/TERT and their interplay between the related gene networks in BC initiation, progression and development of resistance against available targeted therapeutic agents. Use of CRISPR/Cas9 gene-editing technology to generate BC gene-specific transgenic cell lines and animal models to decipher their role and interactions with other gene products has been employed successfully. Moreover, the significance of using CRISPR/Cas9 technology to develop early BC diagnostic tools and treatments is discussed here.

Distributed Reprogramming on the Edge: A New Collaborative Code Dissemination Strategy for IoT

The ongoing era of the Internet of Things is opening up new opportunities towards the integration and interoperation of heterogeneous technologies at different abstraction layers, going from the so-called Edge Computing up to the Cloud and IoT Data Analytics level. With this evolution process the issue of efficient remote reprogramming on the Edge and the Extreme Edge deployments is becoming accentuated, as the amount and diversity of embedded sensing platforms is getting larger. To take advantage of the participation of heterogeneous devices and their in-field dynamic collaboration, in this work a new distributed code dissemination strategy for Edge node reprogramming is proposed, so as to efficiently support the functional reconfiguration, optimization and updating of sensor devices. It combines a partial reprogramming engine integrated into a modular sensor node architecture, with a smart IoT wearable platform for implementing the field collaborative framework. Results show that the proposed solution outperforms other traditional centric dissemination strategies, particularly when expanding the network reprogramming diversity and scale, which is an increasingly common feature in the IoT device deployments and maintenance.