BACKGROUND Hypoxia in cancers results in the upregulation of hypoxia inducible factor 1 (HIF-1) and a microRNA, hsa-miR-210 (miR-210) which is associated with a poor prognosis. METHODS AND FINDINGS In human cancer cell lines and tumours, we found that miR-210 targets the mitochondrial iron sulfur scaffold protein ISCU, required for assembly of iron-sulfur clusters, cofactors for key enzymes i...

Brief "preconditioning" ischemia induces ischemic tolerance (IT) and protects the animal brain from subsequent otherwise lethal ischemia. Identification of the signaling steps most proximal to the development of the IT will allow induction of the resistance to ischemia shortly after the onset of stroke. Animal studies demonstrate a key role of tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) in inductio...

OBJECTIVE We examined whether phosphodiesterase-5 (PDE5) inhibition can promote ischemia-induced angiogenesis. METHODS AND RESULTS Unilateral hindlimb ischemia was generated by resecting right femoral artery in wild-type C3H/He mice, treated with either vehicle or a PDE5 inhibitor vardenafil (10 mg/kg per day). Four weeks after surgery, vardenafil significantly enhanced blood flow recovery an...

Hypoxia is a condition in which an area of the body or a tissue is deprived of sufficient supply of oxygen. The lack of nutrients in a hypoxic tissue generally causes apoptosis but some cells are able to adapt to this hypoxic environment and resist apoptosis. This adaptation occurs as a result of gene activation. Hypoxia is a characteristic feature of many cancers and is the stimulus for overex...

Apoptosis is an essential step in cavitation during embryonic epithelial morphogenesis, but its mechanisms are largely unknown. In this paper, we used embryonic stem cell-differentiated embryoid bodies (EBs) as a model and found that Bnip3 (Bcl-2/adenovirus E1B 19-kD interacting protein), a BH3-only proapoptotic protein, was highly up-regulated during cavitation in a hypoxia-dependent manner. S...

Mitochondrial apoptosis pathway is an important target of cardioprotective signalling. Tanshinones, a group of major bioactive compounds isolated from Salvia miltiorrhiza, have been reported with actions against inflammation, oxidative stress, and myocardial ischemia reperfusion injury. However, the actions of these compounds on the chronic hypoxia-related mitochondrial apoptosis pathway have n...

HIF-1α is the inducible subunit of the dimeric transcription factor HIF-1 (Hypoxia Inducible Factor 1). It is induced by hypoxia and hypoxia-mimetics in most cell types, as well as non-hypoxic signals such as growth factors, cytokines and oncogenes, often in a cell specific manner. HIF-1 is present in virtually all cells of higher eukaryotes and its function is of great biomedical relevance sin...

Excessive apoptosis of intervertebral disk cells and degeneration (IDD) is the prime cause low back pain. B-cell lymphoma 2 (Bcl-2) adenovirus E1B 19 kDa interacting protein 3 (BNIP3), a member Bcl-2 family, are involved in cell autophagy apoptosis. The roles mechanisms BNIP3 unclear. In this study, primary rat were prepared to study effect overexpression on their counting kit (CCK)-8 assay sho...