A novel 72 nt small nucleolar RNA (snoRNA) called U87 was found in rat liver cells. This RNA possesses the features of C/D box snoRNA family: boxes C, D 0, C 0, D, and 11 nt antisense element complementary to 28S ribosomal RNA (rRNA). The vast majority of C/D box snoRNAs direct site-specific 2 0-O-ribose methylation of rRNAs. U87 RNA is suggested to be involved in 2 0-O-methylation of a G3468 r...

MOTIVATION A new hidden Markov model method (SAM-T98) for finding remote homologs of protein sequences is described and evaluated. The method begins with a single target sequence and iteratively builds a hidden Markov model (HMM) from the sequence and homologs found using the HMM for database search. SAM-T98 is also used to construct model libraries automatically from sequences in structural da...

Versican is highly expressed in many types of tumors. In a previous study, we found that a G3 mutant [G3DeltaEGF; a versican G3 domain lacking two epidermal growth factor (EGF)-like motifs] exerted a dominant-negative effect on versican secretion and binding. Here, we report that astrocytoma U87 cells expressing the versican G3 mutant lost the hallmark of cell transformation and tumorigenesis i...

BACKGROUND Intratumoural hypoxia is associated with chemoresistance in glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), a highly malignant brain tumour. Adaptive response to endoplasmic reticulum stress induced by temozolomide is a major obstacle in recurrent GBM. We investigated whether hyperoxia resensitizes temozolomide-resistant GBM cells to temozolomide by abrogating the hypoxia-induced, unfolded protein re...

Paeoniflorin is one of the active ingredients of the commonly used herbal medicine derived from Paeonia, which exhibits anticancer properties. MicroRNA-16 (miR-16) is upregulated in CD133(-) cells, but downregulated in CD133(+) cells from glioma tissue. Matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9) expression in glioma tissue samples is significantly higher than that in healthy brain tissue samples. There...

Radiotherapy is the main locoregional control modality for a number of types of malignant tumors, including glioblastoma. However, radiotherapy fails to prevent recurrence in numerous patients due to the intrinsic radioresistance of cancer cells. Cell senescence is significant in tumor suppressor mechanisms and is closely associated with the radioresistance of cancer cells. Bmi-1 has been propo...

Piperlongumine (PL), a natural alkaloid isolated from the long pepper, may have anti-cancer properties. It selectively targets and kills cancer cells but leaves normal cells intact. Here, we reported that PL selectively killed glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) cells via accumulating reactive oxygen species (ROS) to activate JNK and p38. PL at 20μM could induce severe cell death in three GBM cell li...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the effect of isoliquiritigenin on the activity of DNA topoisomerase (TOP I) and its inhibitory effect on the growth of U87 glioma cells. METHODS This study investigated the inhibitory effect of isoliquiritigenin on the growth of U87 glioma cells and its cytotoxicity by MTT method and determined the effect of isoliquiritigenin on TOP I activity by agarose gel electrop...

Future breakthroughs in cancer therapy must accompany targeted agents that will neutralize cancer stem cells response to circulating growth factors. Since the brain tissue microenvironmental niche is a prerequisite for expression of the stem cell marker CD133 antigen in brain tumors, we investigated the invasion mechanisms specific to CD133(+) U87 glioblastoma cells in response to lysophosphati...