T Cell Receptor (TCR) engagement, co-stimulatory signals, and the presence of inflammatory cytokines. These signals are sensed by mTOR. Once activated, mTOR interacts with and influences T cell signaling pathways essential in regulating cell differentiation, proliferation, survival and metabolism. Multiple agonists (TCR engagement and co-stimulation, growths factors, and cytokines) regulate T c...

The purpose of this study is to investigate the role of PI3K-Akt signaling in prostate cancer cell growth and androgen receptor (AR)-mediated gene expression. Androgendependent LNCaP cells and their androgen-independent counterpart, LNCaP-AI cells, were used. We found that PI3KAkt signaling is elevated in LNCaP-AI cells compared to that in LNCaP cells and is involved in androgen-independent gro...

MAPK signaling cascade initiated by the activation of EGF receptor (EGFR) has been experimentally well studied and analyzed by mathematical modeling extensively [1, 3, 5]. Recently, several studies showed that some of growth hormone-stimulated membrane tyrosine kinase receptors interact with Shc adaptor protein and phosphatidylinositol 3’-kinase (PI3K), and consequently PI3K-activated Akt inhib...

Protein kinase CK2 is a highly conserved serine/ threonine kinase ubiquitously distributed in all investigated eukaryotes and involved in several intracellular pathways which control, among others, cell cycle, proliferation, apoptosis and transformation. Similarly, the PI3K-AKT pathway deregulation has been shown to play an important role in tumor development and tumor response to anti-cancer t...

Objective: To investigate the protective effect of Hedyotis diffusa (HD) on collagen induced arthritis (CIA) rats. Methods: 40 male Wistar rats were randomly divided into four groups: normal group (blank control, n = 10), CIA model group, HD low dose group and HD high dose group. After CIA rats were prepared successfully, HD extract was administrated orally with the dose of 6 g/(kg. d) and 12 g...

Manipulation of T-cell co-inhibitory molecules, such as CTLA-4, PD-1, and BTLA has recently moved to the forefront of cancer immunotherapy. Although these molecules serve as inhibitors of T-cell activation, they are also biomarkers for activated T cells and may in fact have positive immune regulatory functions under certain circumstances. Recently, we demonstrated an unexpected positive associa...

The data reported in this paper use a mouse model system where either the activated form of Notch1 (NotchIC) or c-Myc is under the control of the Tet operator and inducible by removal of doxycycline from the drinking water. Induction of either NotchIC or c-Myc is sufficient to drive the formation of T-cell leukemias that resemble human T-ALL. The authors have also used retroviral expression vec...