OBJECTIVES Curative treatment of breast cancer patients using chemotherapy often fails as a result of intrinsic or acquired resistance of the tumor to the drug. ERK is one of the main components of the Ras/Raf/MEK/ERK cascade, which mediates signal from cell surface receptors to transcription factors to regulate different gene expression. In this study, cytotoxicity and the expression of Erk1/2...

Parkinson’s disease (PD) is characterized by degeneration of nigrostriatal dopamine (DA) neurons. The primary drug used to treat PD symptoms is L-DOPA, but side effects such as dyskinesias limit its use. Previous findings show that L-DOPA treatment induces extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK1/2), a MAP-kinase protein. γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) is intimately involved in basal ganglia fun...

Steroid resistance is a significant problem in management of chronic inflammatory diseases, including asthma. Accessible biomarkers are needed to identify steroid resistant patients to optimize their treatment. This study examined corticosteroid resistance in severe asthma. 24 asthmatics with forced expiratory volume in one second of less then 80% predicted were classified as steroid resistant ...

Raf kinase inhibitory protein (RKIP) functions as a chemo-immunotherapeutic sensitizer of cancers, but regulation of RKIP on tumor radiosensitivity remains largely unexplored. In this study, we investigate the role and mechanism of RKIP in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) radioresistance. The results showed that RKIP was frequently downregulated in the radioresistant NPC tissues compared with rad...

The Ras signaling pathway, consisting of mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) and PI3K/AKT signaling, is a prominent oncogenic pathways in adult diffuse gliomas, but few studies have evaluated such pathways in pediatric malignant gliomas. We investigated by immunohistochemistry MAPK and AKT signaling in a series of 28 pediatric high-grade gliomas (WHO grade III and IV). We sought a possible ...

Background: Systemic sclerosis(SSc) is characterized by progressive fibrosis of the skin and internal organs. The change in epidermal–dermal interactions potentially causes abnormal differentiation SSc epidermis. However, blockage increased Ca2+ signaling restrains pathogenesis SSc-bleomycin mice. activation facilitates induction keratinocyte differentiation, which regulated stromal interaction...

The aims of the current study were to investigate the influence of insufficient radiofrequency ablation (RFA) on the cell proliferation of the human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) cells, SMMC7721, and to elucidate the underlying mechanism. SMMC7721 cells were subjected to a 47°C treatment regimen to simulate insufficient RFA, in the presence or absence of KN93 [a specific inhibitor of Ca2+/calm...

PURPOSE Raf-kinases include three major isoforms. Although the role of B-Raf in melanoma is well established, little is known about C-Raf. We studied effects of C-Raf knockdown in vitro and assessed expression of C-Raf in a large cohort of melanomas and nevi. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN Using specific siRNAs, we knocked down C-Raf expression, and determined the effect on viability, MAP extracellular ...

Several studies have demonstrated the role of endothelial and inducible nitric oxide synthase in cardiac ischemia reperfusion(IR). However, the role of neuronal nitric oxide synthase (nNOS) in IR is still controversial. The present study was designed to explore the possible involvement of nNOS in cardiac IR. nNOS-/- knockout (KO) and wild type C57 (WT) mice were subjected to 45 min of ischemia ...