International Journal of Molecular Sciences, Volume 21, Issue 13

Vascular endothelial growth factor receptor 2 (VEGFR2) is a key receptor in the angiogenesis process. The VEGFR2 expression is upregulated in many cancers so this receptor is an important target for anticancer agents. In the present paper, we analyse...

The aim of the study was to identify differences in the transcriptomic profiles of primary muscle cell cultures derived from the semitendinosus muscle of bulls of beef breeds (Limousin (LIM) and Hereford (HER)) and a dairy breed (Holstein-Friesian (H...

Acute ischemic stroke (AIS) is a devastating neurological condition with a lack of neuroprotective therapeutic options, despite the reperfusion modalities thrombolysis and thrombectomy. Post-ischemic brain damage is aggravated by an excessive inflamm...

The apple is a favorite fruit for human diet and is one of the most important commercial fruit crops around the world. Investigating metabolic variations during fruit development can provide a better understanding on the formation of fruit quality. T...

Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related deaths of men in the Western world. Despite recent advancement in genomics, transcriptomics and proteomics to understand prostate cancer biology and disease progression, castration resista...

In the past, several microtubule targeting agents (MTAs) have been developed into successful anticancer drugs. However, the usage of these drugs has been limited by the acquisition of drug resistance in many cancers. Therefore, there is a constant de...

Over the last few decades, massive research efforts have been put into deciphering the etiology of the pregnancy pathology preeclampsia [...]

Diabetic nephropathy, hypertension, and glomerulonephritis are the most common causes of chronic kidney diseases (CKD). Since CKD of various origins may not become apparent until kidney function is significantly impaired, a differential diagnosis and...

Acute lung injury (ALI) is characterized by severe hypoxemia and has significantly high mortality rates. Acute hyperglycemia occurs in patients with conditions such as sepsis or trauma, among others, and it results in aggravated inflammation and indu...

Inhalations with brine solutions are old but underestimated add-ons to pharmacological treatments of inflammatory lung diseases. Although widely used, not all features underlying their action on the respiratory system have been explored. The aim of t...

To advance pre-clinical vascular drug research, in vitro assays are needed that closely mimic the process of angiogenesis in vivo. Such assays should combine physiological relevant culture conditions with robustness and scalability to enable drug scr...

High-grade serous epithelial ovarian cancer (HGSC) is the most aggressive subtype of epithelial ovarian cancer. The identification of germline and somatic mutations along with genomic information unveiled by The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and other s...

The SARS-CoV-2 virus is a recently-emerged zoonotic pathogen already well adapted to transmission and replication in humans. Although the mutation rate is limited, recently introduced mutations in SARS-CoV-2 have the potential to alter viral fitness....

Tissue-resident macrophages are key players in inflammatory processes, and their activation and functionality are crucial in health and disease. Numerous diseases are associated with alterations in homeostasis or dysregulation of the innate immune sy...

TaCKX, Triticum aestivum (cytokinin oxidase/dehydrogenase) family genes influence the development of wheat plants by the specific regulation of cytokinin content in different organs. However, their detailed role is not known. The TaCKX1, highly and s...

In red blood cells, hemoglobin iron represents the most plausible candidate to catalyze artemisinin activation but the limited reactivity of iron bound to hemoglobin does not play in favor for its direct involvement. Denatured hemoglobin appears a mo...

Dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP-4) inhibitors have been reported to play a protective role against atherosclerosis in both animal models and patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D). However, since T2D is associated with dyslipidemia, hypertension and insulin...

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is a multifactorial age-related neurodegenerative disease that today has no effective treatment to prevent or slow its progression. Neuroactive steroids, including neurosteroids and sex steroids, have attracted attentio...

Platelets are major players in the occurrence of cardiovascular diseases. Auraptene is the most abundant coumarin derivative from plants, and it has been demonstrated to possess a potent capacity to inhibit platelet activation. Although platelets are...

European chestnut orchards are multifunctional agroforestry systems with a key role in environmental management. Their biodiversity is at risk of erosion and farmers do not have enough tools to protect and valorize traditional ecotypes. In particular...

Circulating tumour cells (CTCs) from liquid biopsies are under current investigation in several cancers, including epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) but face significant drawbacks in terms of non-standardised methodology, low viable cell numbers and ac...

Unraveling the role of cytochrome P450 monooxygenases (CYPs/P450s), heme-thiolate proteins present in living and non-living entities, in secondary metabolite synthesis is gaining momentum. In this direction, in this study, we analyzed the genomes of...

Unloading leads to skeletal muscle atrophy via the upregulation of MuRF-1 and MAFbx E3-ligases expression. Reportedly, histone deacetylases (HDACs) 4 and 5 may regulate the expression of MuRF1 and MAFbx. To examine the HDAC-dependent mechanisms invol...

Systemic sclerosis is a rare chronic heterogenous disease that involves inflammation and vasculopathy, and converges in end-stage development of multisystem tissue fibrosis. The loss of tight spatial distribution and temporal expression of proteins i...

Nuclear factor erythroid 2-related factor 2 (NRF2) is a transcription factor that regulates the cellular defense against toxic and oxidative insults through the expression of genes involved in oxidative stress response and drug detoxification. NRF2 a...

Immune therapy improves cancer outcomes, yet many patients do not respond. This pre-clinical study investigated whether vascular disrupting agents (VDAs) could convert an immune unresponsive tumor into a responder. CDF1 mice, with 200 mm³ C3H mammary...

There is cumulating evidence for a contribution of Wnt signaling pathways in multiple processes involved in atherosclerosis and vascular aging. Wnt signaling plays a role in endothelial dysfunction, in the proliferation and migration of vascular smoo...

The regulation of hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) fate decision, whether they keep quiescence, self-renew, or differentiate into blood lineage cells, is critical for maintaining the immune system throughout one’s lifetime. As HSCs are exposed to...

Cystic fibrosis (CF) is caused by mutations in the gene encoding the transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) protein. Some CF patients are compound heterozygous or homozygous for nonsense mutations in the CFTR gene. This implies the presence in th...

An efficient, low-cost and environmental-friendly method to fabricate magneto-active fabrics (MAFs) based on cotton fibers soaked with silicone oil and iron oxide microfibers (mFe) at mass fractions 2 wt.%, 4 wt.% and 8 wt.% is presented. It is shown...

Tyrosinase (TYR) is a metalloenzyme classified as a type-3 copper protein, which is involved in the synthesis of melanin through a catalytic process beginning with the conversion of the amino acid l-Tyrosine (l-Tyr) to l-3,4-dihydroxyphenylalanine (l...

Anxiety disorders range among the most prevalent psychiatric disorders and belong to the leading disorders in the study of the total global burden of disease. Anxiety disorders are complex conditions, with not fully understood etiological mechanisms....

Hypoxia is a well-established feature of prostate cancer (PCa) and is associated with disease aggressiveness. The hypoxic microenvironment initiates multiple adaptive responses including epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) and a remodeling of...

Predicting protein–protein interactions (PPI) represents an important challenge in structural bioinformatics. Current computational methods display different degrees of accuracy when predicting these interactions. Different factors were propose...

The present is a comprehensive review of the immunopathology of Covid-19. The immune reaction to SARS-CoV-2 infection is characterized by differentiation and proliferation of a variety of immune cells with immune mediator production and release, and...

Inflammasomes represent a group of protein complexes that contribute to host defense against pathogens and repair processes upon the induction of inflammation. However, aberrant and chronic inflammasome activation underlies the pathology of numerous...

Photothermal therapy possesses great advantages for the treatment of drug-resistant tumors. Herein, Near Infrared (NIR)-triggered photothermal nanoparticles were developed through loading indocyanine green (ICG), a kind of NIR dye, into amino group-m...

The lymphatic vasculature, along with the blood vasculature, is a vascular system in our body that plays important functions in fluid homeostasis, dietary fat uptake, and immune responses. Defects in the lymphatic system are associated with various d...

Clinical and preclinical studies indicate that zinc (Zn) is an essential factor in the development and treatment of major depressive disorder (MDD). Conventional monoamine-based antidepressants mobilize zinc in the blood and brain of depressed patien...

Advances in molecular biology including genomics, high-throughput sequencing, and genome editing enable increasingly faster and more precise cultivar development. Identifying genes and functional markers (FMs) that are highly associated with plant ph...

Currently, there is no treatment for recovery of human nerve function after damage to the central nervous system (CNS), and there are limited regenerative capabilities in the peripheral nervous system. Since fish are known for their regenerative abil...

Heavy metals (HMs) are released into the environment by many human activities and persist in water even after remediation. The efficient filtration of solubilized HMs is extremely difficult. Phytoremediation appears a convenient tool to remove HMs fr...

Aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid) and its metabolite salicylate, have an anti-melanoma effect by evoking mitochondrial dysfunction through poorly understood mechanisms. Depolarization of the plasma membrane potential leads to voltage-gated Ca²⁺ entry (V...

Indonesian ginger (Zingiber purpureum Rosc.), also known as Bangle, exhibits neurotrophic effects on cultured murine cortical neurons and in the adult mouse brain, but the underlying mechanisms remain unknown. Here, using human fetal neural stem cell...

Adipose tissue is an important regulator of whole-body metabolism and energy homeostasis. The unprecedented growth of obesity and metabolic disease worldwide has required paralleled advancements in research on this dynamic endocrine organ system. Sin...

Acute kidney injury (AKI) is a fatal medical episode caused by sudden kidney damage or failure, leading to the death of patients within a few hours or days. Previous studies demonstrated that exosomes derived from various mesenchymal stem/stromal cel...

Mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) have two characteristics of interest for this paper: the ability to self-renew, and the potential for multiple-lineage differentiation into various cells. MSCs have been used in cardiac tissue regeneration for over a dec...

High growth temperatures negatively affect soybean (Glycine max (L.) Merr) yields and seed quality. Soybean plants, heat stressed during seed development, produce seed that exhibit wrinkling, discoloration, poor seed germination, and have an increase...

The successful maternal tolerance of the semi-allogeneic fetus provides an apparent immunologic paradox. Indeed, deep invasion of placental trophoblast cells into maternal uterine tissue and the following growth of the fetus have to be tolerated by a...

The proteasome is a validated target of cancer therapeutics. Inhibition of proteasome activity results in the activation of the unfolded protein response (UPR) characterized by phosphorylation of eukaryotic initiation factor 2α (eIF2α), g...