Non-Coding RNAs and Neurodegenerative Diseases: Information of their Roles in Apoptosis.

Apoptosis can be known as a key factor in the pathogenesis of neurodegenerative disorders. In disease conditions, the rate of apoptosis expands and tissue damage may become apparent. Recently, the scientific studies of the non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs) has provided new information of the molecular mechanisms that contribute to neurodegenerative disorders. Numerous reports have documented that ncRNAs have important contributions to several biological processes associated with the increase of neurodegenerative disorders. In addition, microRNAs (miRNAs), circular RNAs (circRNAs), as well as, long ncRNAs (lncRNAs) represent ncRNAs subtypes with the usual dysregulation in neurodegenerative disorders. Dysregulating ncRNAs has been associated with inhibiting or stimulating apoptosis in neurodegenerative disorders. Therefore, this review highlighted several ncRNAs linked to apoptosis in neurodegenerative disorders. CircRNAs, lncRNAs, and miRNAs were also illustrated completely regarding the respective signaling pathways of apoptosis.

The Relationship Between Leptin Receptor Expression and Endometrial Carcinoma; A Case-Control Study.

Background & Objective: Endometrial carcinoma is one of the most common malignancies in women in developed countries and the fourth malignancy in Iranian women. Therefore, the identification of its causative factors is essential for the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment. This study was aimed to compare the leptin receptor (Ob-R) expression in the endometrial carcinoma cases and non-carcinoma samples. Methods: In this case-control study, 89 samples (including 45 carcinoma and 44 non-carcinoma samples) were examined. The carcinomatous samples were selected by the census method and others were selected with random method. The data were obtained from histopathologic diagnosis, immunohistochemistry (negative, positive and intensity of immunoreactivity), age, history of diabetes, and hypertension. Ob-R expression was compared in the studied groups using Chi-square, Fisher tests and Multivariate logistic regression analysis. In all tests the level of significance was set at 0.05. The SPSS 26 was used for data analysis. Results: The frequency of high levels of leptin receptors in the patients with endometrial carcinoma was significantly higher compared to the control group (57.8% vs. 2.3%) (P<0.05). Adjusting the effects of age, history of diabetes mellitus (DM) and hypertension (HTN) revealed that the positive-receptor group had 37.75 (95% CI; 5.18-275.04) odds of having endometrial carcinoma (P<0.001). Conclusion: The leptin receptor may be a risk factor for the endometrial carcinoma among women tested in Kashan. Based on these results, leptin receptor might be considered as a potential biomarker for screening the endometrial carcinoma or targeting the therapeutic purposes.

The Important Role of Interleukin-2 in COVID-19.

There is controversial literature about the effects of the interleukin-2 (IL-2) cytokine family in COVID-19 pathogenesis and immunity. So we aimed to identify the potential in the role of the IL-2 family in COVID-19. A narrative review search was done through online databases, including PubMed, Scopus, and Web of Science. The search deadline was up to December 2022. We applied no time limits for the searching strategy. After retrieving articles from the databases, the authors summarized the data into two data extraction tables. The first data extraction table described the changes in the IL-2 cytokine family in COVID-19 and the second table described the therapeutic interventions targeting IL-2 family cytokines. The results of the literature on the role of the IL-2 cytokine family do not show a singular rule. IL-2 cytokine family can change during severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection. Some studies suggest that IL-2 cytokine family rise during the infection and cause severe inflammatory response and cytokine storm. These cytokines are shown to be increased in immunocompromised patients and worsen their prognosis. In individuals without underlying disease, the upregulation of the IL-2 family shows the clinical outcome of the disease and rises with disease severity. However, some other studies show that these cytokines do not significantly change. IL-2 cytokine family is mostly upregulated in healthy individuals who had vaccination, but immunocompromised patients did not show significant changes after a single dose of vaccines, which shows that these patients need booster doses for efficient immunity. IL-2 cytokine family can also be used as immunotherapy agents in COVID-19.

In silico design and immunoinformatics analysis of a chimeric vaccine construct based on Salmonella pathogenesis factors.

Currently, there are two vaccines based on killed and/or weakened Salmonella bacteria, but no recombinant vaccine is available for preventing or treating the disease. We used an in silico approach to design a multi-epitope vaccine against Salmonella using OmpA, OmpS, SopB, SseB, SthA and FilC antigens. We predicted helper T lymphocyte, cytotoxic T lymphocyte, and IFN-γ epitopes. The FilC sequence was used as a bovine TLR5 agonist, and the linkers KK, AAY, GPGPG and EAAAK were used to connect epitopes. The final sequence consisted of 747 amino acid residues, and the expressed soluble protein (∼79.6 kDa) was predicted to be both non-allergenic and antigenic. The tertiary structure of modeled protein was refined and validated, and the interactions of vaccine 3D structure were evaluated using molecular docking, and molecular dynamics simulation (RMSD, RMSF and Gyration). This structurally stable protein could interact with human TLR5. The C-ImmSim server predicted that this proposed vaccine likely induces an immune response by stimulating T and B cells, making it a potential candidate for further evaluation for the prevention and treatment of Salmonella infection.