Gene regulation network based analysis associated with TGF-beta stimulation in lung adenocarcinoma cells

Transforming growth factor [TGF]-beta is over-expressed in a wide variety of cancers such as lung adenocarcinoma. TGF-beta plays a major role in cancer progression through regulating cancer cell proliferation and remodeling of the tumor micro-environment. However, it is still a great challenge to explain the phenotypic effects caused by TGF-beta stimulation and the effect of TGF-beta stimulation on tumor micro-environment

Objectives: To address this issue, in the present study we used two time-course microarray data in human lung adenocarcinoma cells and applied bioinformatics methods to explore the gene regulation network responding to TGF-beta stimulation in lung adenocarcinoma cells

Materials and Methods: The time-dependent reverse-engineering method, protein-protein interaction network analyses, and calculation of the similarity measures between the links were used to construct gene regulatory network and to extract gene clusters

Results: Utilizing the constructed gene regulation network, we predicted NEFL and LUC7A show the opposite and the same change with C21orf90 if HAND2 is knocked-out after treatment with TGF-beta[1] for 4 hours and for 12 hours respectively. FGG and HSPC009 are predicted to display the opposite change with NEFL if CSMD1 is knocked out after treatment with TGF-beta[1] for 12 hours. Additionally, by integrating two datasets, we specially identified several nested clusters which included those genes regulated by TGF-beta stimulation in lung adenocarcinoma cells

Conclusions: Our analysis can help a better understanding regarding how TGF-beta stimulation causes the expression change of a number of the genes and provide a novel insight into TGF-beta stimulation effect on lung adenocarcinoma cells

Effect of Ginkgo leaf extract on vascular endothelial function in patients with early stage diabetic nephropathy / 中国结合医学杂志

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To explore the effect of ginkgo leaf extract (GLE) on vascular endothelial function (VEF) in patients with early stage diabetic nephropathy (DN).</p><p><b>METHODS</b>Sixty-four patients were randomized equally by a randomzing digital table into two groups, the treated group and the control group. They were all treated for 8 weeks with conventional therapy for diabetes, but GLE tablets were given to the treated group additionally. Changes in VEF were estimated before and after treatment by ultrasonic examination of the brachial artery. In the meantime, changes in plasma levels of the von Willebrand factor (vWF), nitric oxide (NO) and endothelin-1 (ET-1) were observed as well.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>The brachial arterial endothelium dependent dilating function in the treated group increased from 4.91+/-2.31% before treatment to 6.78+/-3.89% after treatment (P<0.05), while the level of vWF decreased from 182.05+/-64.13% to 128.56+/-48.98%, and that of NO increased from 50.16+/-24.64 micromol/L to 70.65+/-28.71 micromol/L (P<0.01). However, these indexes were not significantly changed in the control group after treatment (P>0.05).</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>GLE could decrease the plasma level of vWF, raise the plasma NO level and improve the endothelium dependent vascular dilating function in DN patients.</p>