22 Results Found

Vascular calcification (VC) is the pathological precipitation of calcium salts in the walls of blood vessels. It is a risk factor for cardiovascular events and their associated mortality. VC can be observed in a variety of cardiovascular diseases and...

Membrane-associated estrogen receptors (ER)-α36 and G protein-coupled estrogen receptor (GPER) play important roles in the estrogen’s rapid non-genomic actions including stimulation of cell proliferation. Estrogen via these receptors indu...

Flavivirus comprises globally emerging and re-emerging pathogens such as Zika virus (ZIKV), Dengue virus (DENV), and West Nile virus (WNV), among others. Although some vaccines are available, there is an unmet medical need as no effective antiviral t...

Vascular calcification (VC) is an important contributor and prognostic factor in the pathogenesis of cardiovascular diseases. VC is an active process mediated by the release of extracellular vesicles by vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs), and the e...

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is manifested by hepatic steatosis, insulin resistance, hepatocyte death, and systemic inflammation. Obesity induces steatosis and chronic inflammation in the liver. However, the precise mechanism underlying...

Alzheimer’s disease (AD) is characterized by the progressive accumulation of amyloid-β and hyperphosphorylated tau (pTau), which can spread throughout the brain via extracellular vesicles (EVs). Membrane ceramide enrichment regulated by th...

The accumulation of lipid droplets (LDs) and ceramides (Cer) is linked to non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), regularly co-existing with type 2 diabetes and decreased immune function. Chronic inflammation and increased disease severity in vira...

Ataxin-2 (human gene symbol ATXN2) acts during stress responses, modulating mRNA translation and nutrient metabolism. Ataxin-2 knockout mice exhibit progressive obesity, dyslipidemia, and insulin resistance. Conversely, the progressive ATXN2 gain of...

Extracellular vesicles (EVs), including exosomes and microvesicles, function in cell-to-cell communication through delivery of proteins, lipids and microRNAs to target cells via endocytosis and membrane fusion. These vesicles are enriched in ceramide...

The progression of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) correlates with the propagation of hyperphosphorylated tau (pTau) from the entorhinal cortex to the hippocampus and neocortex. Neutral sphingomyelinase2 (nSMase2) is critical in the biosynthesis of ex...

Sphingomyelinase (SMase) is responsible for the breakdown of sphingomyelin (SM) with production of ceramide. The absence of acid sphingomyelinase (aSMase) causes abnormal synapse formation in Niemann-Pick type A (NPA) disease. Because high levels of...

Liver cancer is a prevalent form of cancer worldwide. While research has shown that increasing sphingomyelin (SM) hydrolysis by activating the cell surface membrane-associated neutral sphingomyelinase 2 (nSMase2) can control cell proliferation and ap...

Alterations of sphingolipids and their metabolizing enzymes play a role in various diseases. However, peripheral biomarkers for such changes are limited. Particularly, in the increasingly reported involvement of neutral sphingomyelinase (NSM) with fo...

DNA damage, caused by various oncogenic stresses, can induce cell death or cellular senescence as an important tumor suppressor mechanism. Senescent cells display the features of a senescence-associated secretory phenotype (SASP), secreting inflammat...

Sphingolipids (SLs) are critical components of membrane bilayers that play a crucial role in their physico-chemical properties. Ceramide is the prototype and most studied SL due to its role as a second messenger in the regulation of multiple signalin...

Tumor-derived extracellular vesicles (EVs) play an important role in cancer progression. Neutral sphingomyelinases (nSMases) are lipid-modifying enzymes that modulate the secretion of EVs from cells. How nSMase activity and therefore ceramide generat...

In the last decade, cholesterol level has been implicated in several types of cancer, including breast cancer. In the current study, we aimed to investigate the condition of lipid depletion, hypocholesterolemia or hypercholesterolemia reproduced in v...

To promote the potential of arachidonic acid (ARA) for cancer prevention and management, experiments were implemented to disclose the mechanisms of its tumoricidal action. Hepatocellular, lung, and breast carcinoma and normal hepatocytes cell lines w...

Sphingolipids are important biological mediators both in health and disease. We investigated the vascular effects of enhanced sphingomyelinase (SMase) activity in a mouse model of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) to gain an understanding of the signal...

Clinical trials have shown that electric stimulation (ELSM) using either cardiac resynchronization therapy (CRT) or cardiac contractility modulation (CCM) approaches is an effective treatment for patients with moderate to severe heart failure, but th...

Background: Extracellular vesicles (EVs) can carry pathological cargo, contributing to disease progression. The enzyme neutral sphingomyelinase 2 (nSMase2) plays a critical role in EV biogenesis, making it a promising therapeutic target. Our lab prev...

Non-lethal low levels of oxidative stress leads to rapid activation of the transcription factor nuclear factor-E2-related factor 2 (Nrf2), which upregulates the expression of genes important for detoxification, glutathione synthesis, and defense agai...