Colorectal cancer progression involves dysregulated signaling pathways such as Hippo-YAP, but upstream regulators remain poorly defined. Here we demonstrate that oxysterol-binding protein-like 3 (OSBPL3) modulates Hippo-YAP signaling to drive tumor aggressiveness. Analysis of clinical specimens and experimental models shows that elevated OSBPL3 levels in colorectal cancer tissues correlate with shortened patient survival. Depleting OSBPL3 impairs cancer cell proliferation and invasion and induces cell cycle arrest, while its overexpression accelerates tumor growth. Mechanistic studies reveal that OSBPL3 binds 14-3-3 proteins to promote YAP1 nuclear translocation, activating downstream oncogenic pathways. Notably, tumors with high OSBPL3 expression exhibit resistance to MEK inhibitors, but this resistance is overcome by YAP1 suppression or combined YAP/MEK inhibition in patient-derived organoids. These results establish OSBPL3 as a critical Hippo-YAP pathway regulator and propose targeting OSBPL3-mediated signaling as a therapeutic strategy for colorectal cancers with Hippo pathway alterations.

BackgroundColorectal adenocarcinoma (COAD) is a prevalent malignant tumor associated with a high mortality rate. Within the tumor microenvironment, CD8+ T cells play a pivotal role in the anti-tumor immune response within the human body. Fibrosis directly and indirectly affects the therapeutic response of tumor immunotherapy. However, the significance of regulatory genes associated with tumor-associated fibrosis and CD8+ T cell infiltration remains uncertain. Therefore, it is imperative to identify biomarkers with prognostic value and elucidate the precise role of CD8+ T cells and tumor-associated fibrosis.MethodsWe performed a single-cell transcriptome analysis of COAD samples from the GEO database. To evaluate immune infiltration in COAD samples, we utilized CIBERSORT and ESTIMATE. Furthermore, we analyzed the correlation between CD8+ T cells and immune infiltration. To analyze COAD expression’s quantitative immune cell composition data, we conducted a Weighted Gene Correlation Network Analysis and utilized a deconvolution algorithm. The data for these analyses were obtained from the GEO database. We utilized univariate Cox regression and LASSO analysis to create a prognostic model. The predictive model was assessed through Kaplan-Meier analysis, and a survival prediction nomogram was created. Additionally, we analyzed the correlation between the prognostic model and chemotherapy drug sensitivity. To estimate the expression of hub genes, we employed immunohistochemistry, real-time PCR, and western blot techniques.ResultsSingle-cell transcriptome analysis has indicated a higher prevalence of CD8+ T cells in COAD tumor samples. The connection between COAD and CD8+ T cells was further confirmed by WGCNA and deconvolution analysis using the GEO database. The Protein-Protein Interaction network analysis revealed three hub genes: LARS2, SEZ6L2, and SOX7. A predictive model was subsequently created using LASSO and univariate COX regression, which included these three genes. Two of these hub genes (LARS2 and SEZ6L2) were found to be upregulated in COAD cell lines and tissues, while SOX7 was observed to be downregulated. The prognostic model demonstrated a significant association with CD8+ T cells, suggesting that these genes could serve as potential biomarkers and targets for gene therapy in treating COAD.ConclusionThis study has identified three key genes associated with CD8+ T cells and the prognosis of COAD, providing new prognostic biomarkers for diagnosing and treating COAD.

BACKGROUND:Fibrosis refers to abnormal deposition of extracellular matrix, which leads to organ dysfunction. Metabolic alterations, especially enhanced glycolysis and suppressed fatty acid oxidation, are recognized as an essential pathogenic process of fibrosis. Recently, several reports indicate that the changes in microbiota composition are associated with metabolic disorders, suggesting microbes may contribute to organ fibrosis by regulating metabolic processes. METHODS:In this study, microbial reannotation was carried out on the RNA-seq data of fibrotic organs. Then, the microbial composition differences among healthy and fibrotic organ samples were determined by alpha and beta diversity analysis. Common and specific microbial markers of fibrosis were also identified by LEfSe. After that, the correlation analysis of the characteristic microbegene- functional pathway was conducted to confirm the effects of microbes on host metabolism. RESULTS:The results showed that the microbial composition significantly differed between healthy and diseased organs. Besides, the common characteristic microbes interacted closely with each other and contributed to fibrosis through symbiosis or inhibition. The largest proportion in fibrosis organs was Proteobacteria, which was the main source of pathogenic microbes. CONCLUSION:Further study found that the metabolic alteration driven by common and special characteristic microbes in fibrotic organs focused on the processes related to glycolysis and fatty acid metabolism.

Trastuzumab (TRZ) is an anti-HER2 monoclonal antibody associated with significant survival benefits; however, its clinical utility is restricted by trastuzumab-induced cardiotoxicity (TIC). While the inhibition of HER2 induces mitochondrial dysfunction in cardiomyocytes, it is unclear whether mitochondrial quality control participates in trastuzumab-mediated cardiomyocyte pyroptosis. This study demonstrated that TRZ leads to a reduction in left ventricular systolic function, myocardial pyroptosis, and mitochondrial oxidative stress; alterations in the mitochondrial membrane potential; changes in mitochondrial permeability; mitochondrial dysfunction; and a decrease in mitochondrial biosynthesis in the murine heart. Supplementation with exogenous spermidine inhibits myocardial oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunction, and promotes mitochondrial biosynthesis in mice, thereby protecting cardiac function. Additionally, SIRT3 plays a protective role in TRZ-induced myocardial injury. In SIRT3 knockout mice, TRZ-induced cardiac injury was exacerbated, and mitochondrial damage was aggravated. In conclusion, these findings reveal the pathogenic mechanism underlying trastuzumab-induced cardiomyopathy and suggest a novel therapeutic target for preventing cardiotoxicity in HER2+ breast cancer treatment.

Skin wound healing is a complicated biological process that mainly occurs in response to injury, burns, or diabetic ulcers. It can also be triggered by other conditions such as dermatitis and melanoma-induced skin cancer. Delayed healing or non-healing after skin injury presents an important clinical issue; therefore, further explorations into the occurrence and development of wound healing at the cellular and molecular levels are necessary. Single-cell sequencing (SCS) is used to sequence and analyze the genetic messages of a single cell. Furthermore, SCS can accurately detect cell expression and gene sequences. The use of SCS technology has resulted in the emergence of new concepts pertaining to wound healing, making it an important tool for studying the relevant mechanisms and developing treatment strategies. This article discusses the application value of SCS technology, the effects of the latest research on skin wound healing, and the value of SCS technology in clinical applications. Using SCS to determine potential biomarkers for wound repair will serve to accelerate wound healing, reduce scar formation, optimize drug delivery, and facilitate personalized treatments.

The advancement of single-cell sequencing technology has smoothed the ability to do biological studies at the cellular level. Nevertheless, single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq) data presents several obstacles due to the considerable heterogeneity, sparsity and complexity. Although many machine-learning models have been devised to tackle these difficulties, there is still a need to enhance their efficiency and accuracy. Current deep learning methods often fail to fully exploit the intrinsic interconnections within cells, resulting in unsatisfactory results. Given these obstacles, we propose a unique approach for analyzing scRNA-seq data called scMPN. This methodology integrates multi-layer perceptron and graph neural network, including attention network, to execute gene imputation and cell clustering tasks. In order to evaluate the gene imputation performance of scMPN, several metrics like cosine similarity, median L1 distance and root mean square error are used. These metrics are utilized to compare the efficacy of scMPN with other existing approaches. This research utilizes criteria such as adjusted mutual information, normalized mutual information and integrity score to assess the efficacy of cell clustering across different approaches. The superiority of scMPN over current single-cell data processing techniques in cell clustering and gene imputation investigations is shown by the experimental findings obtained from four datasets with gold-standard cell labels. This observation demonstrates the efficacy of our suggested methodology in using deep learning methodologies to enhance the interpretation of scRNA-seq data.

Autophagy deficiency in macrophages exacerbates inflammation in atherosclerosis (AS), and recently, galectin-3 (Gal-3) has been implicated as a critical promoter of inflammation in AS. Further, melatonin (Mel) exerts an autophagy-promoting effect in many chronic inflammatory diseases. In this study, we aimed to investigate whether Mel inhibits AS progression by downregulating Gal-3 to enhance autophagy and inhibit inflammation. Thus, we performed in vivo and in vitro experiments using high-fat diet (HFD)-fed ApoE-/-  mice and THP-1 macrophages, respectively. Smart-seq of AS plaque macrophages revealed that the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) downregulated by Mel were enriched in immune-related processes, and changes in inflammation status were confirmed based on lower levels of proinflammatory factors in Mel-treated HFD-fed ApoE-/-  mice and THP-1 macrophages. Further, via transcriptome-based multiscale network pharmacology platform (TMNP), the upstream target genes of the smart-seq DEGs were identified, and Gal-3 showed a high score. Gal-3 was downregulated both in vivo and in vitro by Mel treatment. Besides, the enrichment of the target genes predicted via the TMNP method indicated that autophagy considerably affected the DEGs. Mel treatment as well as Gal-3 knockdown downregulated most inflammatory response-related proteins could attribute to enhancing autophagy. Mechanistically, Mel treatment inhibited Gal-3 leading to lowering the activity of the nuclear transcription factor-kappa B (NF-κB) pathway, and promoting the nuclear localization of transcription factor EB (TFEB). However, increased secretion of Gal-3 activated the phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K)/protein kinase B (AKT) pathway and impaired autophagy via binding to CD98. Thus, Mel promoted autophagy and restrained inflammation by downregulating Gal-3, implying that it holds promise as a treatment for AS.

The cover image is based on the Original Article Melatonin inhibits atherosclerosis progression via galectin-3 downregulation to enhance autophagy and inhibit inflammation by Zitong Wang et al., https://doi.org/10.1111/jpi.12855.

BACKGROUND:Pathological cardiac hypertrophy occurs in response to numerous stimuli and precedes heart failure (HF). Therapies that ameliorate pathological cardiac hypertrophy are highly needed.METHODS:The expression level of miR-30d was analyzed in hypertrophy models and serum of patients with chronic heart failure by qRT-PCR. Gain and loss-of-function experiments of miR-30d were performed in vitro. miR-30d gain of function were performed in vivo. Bioinformatics, western blot, luciferase assay, qRT-PCR, and immunofluorescence were performed to examine the molecular mechanisms of miR-30d.FINDINGS:miR-30d was decreased in both murine and neonatal rat cardiomyocytes (NRCMs) models of hypertrophy. miR-30d overexpression ameliorated phenylephrine (PE) and angiotensin II (Ang II) induced hypertrophy in NRCMs, whereas the opposite phenotype was observed when miR-30d was downregulated. Consistently, the miR-30d transgenic rat was found to protect against isoproterenol (ISO)-induced pathological hypertrophy. Mechanistically, methyltransferase EZH2 could promote H3K27me3 methylation in the promotor region of miR-30d and suppress its expression during the pathological cardiac hypertrophy. miR-30d prevented pathological cardiac hypertrophy via negatively regulating its target genes MAP4K4 and GRP78 and inhibiting pro-hypertrophic nuclear factor of activated T cells (NFAT). Adeno-associated virus (AAV) serotype 9 mediated-miR-30d overexpression exhibited beneficial effects in murine hypertrophic model. Notably, miR-30d was reduced in serum of patients with chronic heart failure and miR-30d overexpression could significantly ameliorate pathological hypertrophy in human embryonic stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes.INTERPRETATION:Overexpression of miR-30d may be a potential approach to treat pathological cardiac hypertrophy.FUNDING:This work was supported by the grants from National Key Research and Development Project (2018YFE0113500 to J Xiao), National Natural Science Foundation of China (82020108002 to J Xiao, 81900359 to J Li), the grant from Science and Technology Commission of Shanghai Municipality (20DZ2255400 and 21XD1421300 to J Xiao, 22010500200 to J Li), Shanghai Sailing Program (19YF1416400 to J Li), the "Dawn" Program of Shanghai Education Commission (19SG34 to J Xiao), the "Chen Guang" project supported by the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission and Shanghai Education Development Foundation (19CG45 to J Li).

Atherosclerosis, predominantly characterized by the disturbance of lipid homeostasis, has become the main causation of various cardiovascular diseases. Therefore, there is an urgent requirement to explore efficacious targets that act as lipid modulators for atherosclerosis. Transcription factor EB (TFEB), whose activity depends on post-translational modifications, such as phosphorylation, acetylation, SUMOylation, ubiquitination, etc., is significant for normal cell physiology. Recently, increasing evidence implicates a role of TFEB in lipid homeostasis, via its functionality of promoting lipid degradation and efflux through mediating lipophagy, lipolysis, and lipid metabolism-related genes. Furthermore, a regulatory effect on lipid transporters and lipid mediators by TFEB is emerging. Notably, TFEB makes a possible therapeutic target of atherosclerosis by regulating lipid metabolism. This review recapitulates the update and current advances on TFEB mediating lipid metabolism to focus on two intracellular activities: a) how cells perceive external stimuli and initiate transcription programs to modulate TFEB function, and b) how TFEB restores lipid homeostasis in the atherosclerotic process. In-depth research is warranted to develop potent agents against TFEB to alleviate or reverse the progression of atherosclerosis.

Atherosclerosis is a chronic inflammatory disease that commonly affects the elderly and is characterized by vascular damage, macrophage infiltration, and plaque formation. Moreover, it increases the risk of cardiovascular disease. The pathogenesis of atherosclerosis involves an interplay between macrophage autophagy and apoptosis. A recently discovered transcription factor, transcription factor EB (TFEB) is known to activate autophagy in macrophages. Sirtuin deacetylase 1 (SIRT1), a nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+)-dependent histone deacetylase, activates several transcription factors, including TFEB. We studied the effects of berberine on the NAD+ synthesis pathway and interactions between SIRT1 and TFEB. We also studied the effects of berberine-induced TFEB activation via SIRT1 on autophagy and apoptosis of peritoneal macrophages. We found that berberine promoted autophagy of peritoneal macrophages by activating SIRT1 via the NAD+ synthesis pathway and, in turn, promoting TFEB nuclear translocation and deacetylation. The functional regulation of SIRT1 and TFEB by berberine could be exploited as a potential therapeutic strategy for atherosclerosis.

内质网(endoplasmic reticulum,ER)是真核细胞中最大的膜状细胞器,由跨越细胞质的连续片状或管状结构组成,参与蛋白质合成、修饰和转运,脂质和类固醇合成,Ca2+平衡及分泌的调节等[1].ER是一种高度动态化的细胞器,其膜蛋白及脂质的半衰期约为3～5 d,需要经过不断地翻新以维持其结构和功能的完整性.除了基础的循环周转外,在Ca2+平衡失调、缺氧、生物合成需求量增大、未折叠蛋白丰度增加、蛋白超聚积或者药物作用等情况时,ER会发生应激,其中积累的大量未折叠或错误折叠蛋白,超出ER负荷,致使ER扩张,此时ER必须为适应各种应激源而更活跃地周转,以防止过度扩张,维持ER稳态.

线粒体相关内质网膜是指内质网和线粒体之间高度动态的紧密连接部分,参与维持内质网和线粒体的正常功能,与细胞脂质代谢、钙稳态、线粒体动力学、自噬和凋亡、内质网应激和炎症等密切相关.研究显示线粒体相关内质网膜功能异常或者数量和结构改变参与心血管疾病的发生发展.本文总结了线粒体相关内质网膜的功能,阐述了其在心血管疾病中的作用及可能机制,为线粒体相关内质网膜成为心血管疾病治疗的新靶点提供理论参考.

The incidence of atherosclerosis (AS), a major contributor to cardiovascular disease, is steadily rising along with an increasingly older population worldwide. Pyroptosis, a form of inflammatory programmed cell death, determines the release of pro-inflammatory mediators by endothelial cells, smooth muscle cells, and atheroma-associated macrophages and foam cells, thereby playing a critical role in AS progression. Canonical pyroptosis is mediated by inflammasome formation, activation of caspase-1, and maturation and release of proinflammatory cytokines. Electrical stimulation (ES) is a noninvasive, safe therapy that has been shown to alleviate symptoms in several health conditions. Here, we investigated the anti-inflammatory and anti-pyroptotic effects of ES in human THP-1 macrophages treated with the dipeptidyl peptidase inhibitor Val-boroPro (VbP). We found that ES downregulated NOD-like receptor family protein 3 (NLRP3) inflammasome, ASC, and caspase-1 expression and abrogated the release of Interleukin-1β (IL-1β) and Interleukin-18 (IL-18), indicating effective pyroptosis inhibition. These changes were paralleled by a reduction in reactive oxygen species (ROS) production, reversal of VbP-induced sirtuin3 (Sirt3) downregulation, deacetylation of ATG5, and induction of autophagy. These findings suggest that ES may be a viable strategy to counteract pyroptosis-mediated inflammation in AS by raising Sirt3 to promote autophagy and inhibit ROS generation.

The activation of the renin-angiotensin system (RAS) induced by increased angiotensin II (AngII) levels has been implicated in muscle atrophy, which is involved in the pathogenesis of congestive heart failure. Although peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma (PPARγ) activation can suppress RAS, the exact role of PPARγ in AngII-induced muscle atrophy is unclear. Here we identified PPARγ as a negative regulator of miR-29b, a microRNA that is able to promote multiple types of muscle atrophy. Suppression of miR-29b could prevent AngII-induced muscle atrophy both in vitro and in vivo. IGF1, PI3K(p85α), and Yin Yang 1 (YY1) were identified as target genes of miR-29b, and overexpression of these targets could rescue AngII-induced muscle atrophy. Importantly, inhibition of PPARγ was sufficient to induce muscle atrophy, while PPARγ overexpression could attenuate that. These data indicate that the PPARγ/miR-29b axis mediates AngII-induced muscle atrophy, and increasing PPARγ or inhibiting miR-29b represents a promising approach to counteract AngII-induced muscle atrophy.

动脉血管的炎症反应和胆固醇的积累是动脉粥样硬化形成的高危因素,因此抑制巨噬细胞炎症反应和促进胆固醇流出已成为治疗动脉粥样硬化的有效途径.三磷酸腺苷结合盒转运体A1(ATP binding cassette transporterA1,ABCA1)能将细胞内游离胆固醇转运给贫脂的载脂蛋白A-I,从而促进高密度脂蛋白的形成,介导胆固醇的流出.miRNA作为一种非编码的微小RNA,通过降解靶基因mRNA或阻碍其翻译,发挥ABCA1转录后的调控作用.因此探究ABCA1的作用机制及调控有利于动脉粥样硬化的有效防治.