Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) virion infectivity factor (Vif) causes the proteasome-mediated destruction of human antiviral protein APOBEC3G by tethering it to a cellular E3 ubiquitin ligase composed of ElonginB, ElonginC, Cullin5, and Rbx2. It has been proposed that HIV Vif hijacks the E3 ligase through two regions within its C-terminal domain: a BC box region that interacts with ElonginC...

Cytokines use complex signaling cascades to elicit their biological effects, many of which involve phosphorylation as a mechanism of activation. Rapid and efficient attenuation of cytokine signals is crucial to maintaining regulation of these processes and to preventing toxic side effects. Phosphatases have been shown to be involved in these regulatory processes, but more recent research has se...

SH2-containing-inositol-5-phosphatases (SHIPs) dephosphorylate the 5-phosphate of phosphatidylinositol-3,4,5-trisphosphate (PI(3,4,5)P3) and play important roles in regulating the PI3K/Akt pathway in physiology and disease. Aiming to uncover interdomain regulatory mechanisms in SHIP2, we determined crystal structures containing the 5-phosphatase and a proximal region adopting a C2 fold. This re...

PURPOSE Current first-line chemotherapy for patients with metastatic adrenocortical cancer (ACC) includes doxorubicin, etoposide, cisplatin, and mitotane with a reported response rate of only 23.2%. New therapeutic leads for patients with refractory tumors are needed; there is no standard second-line treatment. METHODS Samples from 135 ACC tumors were analyzed by immunohistochemistry, in situ...

Objective. To analyze clinico-pathological features of Chinese patients with UPSC, and investigate roles of Her-2/neu protein expression and gene amplification in UPSC prognosis. Methods. Thirty-six patients with UPSC treated in Cancer Hospital of Fudan University from 1996 to 2006 were analysed retrospectively. Chromogenic in situ hybridization (CISH) and immunohistochemistry (IHC) were perfor...

The aim of this study was to determine the relationship between amplification of HER2 (Human epidermal growth factor receptor 2) and Topo2a (topoisomerase 2a) and their influence on prognosis in metastatic breast cancer (MBC) patients. Amplification of both HER2 and Topo2a genes was determined by chromogenic in situ hybridization (CISH) in primary tumor tissue of 71 MBC patients. Starting point...

Aurora-A is a serine-threonine kinase having vital cellular functions in mitosis and is a promising target for therapy in treating patients with cancer. This study assesses the clinicopathological associations of AURKA gene amplification in clinical breast tumors and association of gene copy number with its mRNA and protein expression in breast cancer cell lines. In this pilot study, we examine...

BACKGROUND Paired-like homeodomain transcription factor 2 (PITX2) is another new marker in breast carcinoma since hypermethylation at P2 promoter of this gene was noted to be associated with poor prognosis. We investigated the expression of PITX2 protein using immunohistochemistry in invasive ductal carcinoma and its association with the established growth receptors such as estrogen receptor (E...