Cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs), as the activated fibroblasts in the tumor stroma, are important modifiers of tumour progression. In the present study, we observed that azoxymethane and dextran sodium sulfate treatments induced increasingly severe colorectal mucosal inflammation and the intratumoural accumulation of CAFs. Fibroblast growth factor (FGF)-1 and FGF-3 were detected in infiltra...

Fibroblast growth factor 19 (FGF19) is a hormone-like protein that regulates carbohydrate, lipid and bile acid metabolism. At supra-physiological doses, FGF19 also increases hepatocyte proliferation and induces hepatocellular carcinogenesis in mice. Much of FGF19 activity is attributed to the activation of the liver enriched FGF Receptor 4 (FGFR4), although FGF19 can activate other FGFRs in vit...

Deguelin, a natural component derived from leguminous plants, has been used as pesticide in some regions. Accumulating evidence show that deguelin has promising chemopreventive and therapeutic activities against cancer cells. This study shows that low concentrations of deguelin can lead to significant delay in zebrafish embryonic development through growth inhibition and induction of apoptosis....

The study objectives were: to mine the complete exome to identify putative rare single nucleotide variants (SNVs) associated with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS)-diarrhea (IBS-D) phenotype, to assess genes that regulate bile acids in IBS-D, and to explore univariate associations of SNVs with symptom phenotype and quantitative traits in an independent IBS cohort. Using principal components analys...

I read with interest the paper by Uriarte et al, in which the authors conclude that ‘Fgf15 is a key mediator of the liver growth-promoting effects of bile acids.’ There are reasons to question the conclusions drawn in this paper. Due to space limit I forward three issues. (1) Fgf15 exerts its effects via FGFR4 as mentioned. The authors have not recognised a report by Yu et al showing that delet...

The first electrochemical immunosensor for the determination of fibroblast growth factor receptor 4 (FGFR4) biomarker is reported in this work. The biosensor involves a sandwich configuration with covalent immobilization of a specific capture antibody onto activated carboxylic-modified magnetic microcarriers (HOOC-MBs) and amperometric detection at disposable carbon screen-printed electrodes (S...

BACKGROUND Sorafenib, a multi-kinase inhibitor, is used as a standard therapy for advanced hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). However, complete remission has not been achieved and the molecular basis of HCC resistance to sorafenib remains largely unknown. Previous studies have shown that fibroblast growth factor 19 (FGF19) expression correlates with tumor progression and poor prognosis of HCC. Her...