Background: Promoter hyper-methylation of tumor suppressor genes is a common event that occurs in cancer. As methylation is a reversible modification, agents capable of reversing an abnormal methylation status should help to combat cancer. 5-Aza-CdR is a DNA methyl-transferase inhibitor. The present study aimed to evaluate the effect of 5-Aza-CdR on the proliferation of human pancreatic cancer ...

Traditional therapies for pancreatic cancer are usually expensive and likely to cause side effects, and most patients have the risk of recurrence and suffering pain. Here, we investigated combination treatment of epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG) and non-invasive low strength pulsed electric field (PEF) on the human pancreatic cell line PANC-1. Cells were cultured in various concentrations of E...

BACKGROUND The ability to evade apoptosis is one of the key properties of cancer. The apoptogenic effect of nickel nanowires (Ni NWs) on cancer cell lines has never been adequately addressed. Due to the unique physicochemical characteristics of Ni NWs, we envision the development of a novel anticancer therapeutics specifically for pancreatic cancer. Thus, we investigated whether Ni NWs induce R...

AIM To determine the possibility that diabetes mellitus promotes pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma via glyceraldehyde (GA)-derived advanced glycation-end products (GA-AGEs). METHODS PANC-1, a human pancreatic cancer cell line, was treated with 1-4 mmol/L GA for 24 h. The cell viability and intracellular GA-AGEs were measured by WST-8 assay and slot blotting. Moreover, immunostaining of PANC-1 ...

S100A11, a member of S100 calcium-binding protein family, is associated with the numerous processes of tumorigenesis and metastasis. In the present study, the role of S100A11, and its possible underlying mechanisms in cell proliferation, apoptosis and cell cycle distribution in human pancreatic cancer were explored. Immunohistochemical analyses of S100A11 and phosphorylated (p)-AKT serine/threo...

Deleted in liver cancer-1 (DLC-1) has been isolated from primary hepatocellular carcinoma and demonstrated to be a potential tumor suppressor gene. The aim of the present study was to observe the effect of the DLC-1 gene on pancreatic cancer cell growth and evaluate the feasibility of using the DLC-1 gene in gene therapy for pancreatic cancer. A recombinant plasmid (pcDNA3.1/DLC-1) was transfec...

Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) is an incretin hormone capable of restoring normal glucose tolerance in aging glucose-intolerant Wistar rats. Whether the antidiabetic properties of GLP-1 are exclusively due to its insulin secretory activity remains to be determined. A GLP-1-dependent differentiation of pancreatic precursor cells into mature beta-cells has recently been proposed. The aim of this...

Galectin-1 has previously been shown to be strongly expressed in activated pancreatic stellate cells (PSCs) and promote the development and metastasis of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). However, the molecular mechanisms by which Galectin-1 promotes the malignant behavior of pancreatic cancer cells remain unclear. In this study, we examined the effects of Galectin-1 knockdown or overexp...

Nerve growth factor (NGF) exerts both stimulatory and inhibitory effects on neuronal and certain nonneuronal tumors with the effect based on the type of tumor. We investigated NGF and its receptors (TrkA and p75) in pancreatic cancer cells (PANC-1, MIA-PaCa-2, CAPAN-1, ASPC-1, and T3M4) by reverse transcription-PCR, Western blot analysis, NGF ELISA, and growth assays. NGF mRNA was present at co...