The Roles of miRNAs in Medulloblastoma: A Systematic Review

Medulloblastoma is considered one of the most threatening malignant brain tumors with an extremely high mortality rate in children. In the medulloblastoma, there are several genes and mutations found to work in an unregulated manner that works together to push the cells into a cancerous state. With the discovery of non-coding RNAs such as microRNAs (miRNAs), it has been shown that a different layer of gene regulations may be disrupted which would cause cancer. This fact led scientists to put their focus on the role of miRNAs in cancer. A mature miRNA contains a seed sequence which gives the miRNA to identify and attach to the interest mRNA; this attachment may lead degradation of mRNA or suppress of translation of the mRNA. The expression of miRNAs in medulloblastoma shows that some of these non-coding RNAs are overexpressed (OncomiRs) which help cells to proliferate and keep their stemness features. On the other hand, there are other forms of these miRNAs which normally inhibit cell proliferation and promote cell differentiation (tumor suppressor). These are down-regulated during cancer progression. In this systematic review, we attempted to gather several important studies on miRNAs’ role in medulloblastoma tumors and the importance of these non-coding RNAs in the future study of cancer.

Evaluation of sHLA-G levels in serum of patients with prostate cancer identify as a potential of tumor marker / 대한해부학회지

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer type in men and is the second cause of death, due to cancer, in patients over 50, after lung cancer. Prostate specific antigen (PSA) is a widely used tumor marker for prostate cancer. Recently, PSA is discovered in non-prostatic cancer tissues in men and women raising doubts about its specificity for prostatic tissues. PSA exists in low serum level in healthy men and in higher levels in many prostate disorders, including prostatitis and prostate cancer. Thus, a supplementary tumor marker is needed to accurately diagnose the cancer and to observe the patient after treatment. Recently, soluble human leukocyte antigen-G (sHLA-G) has been introduced as a new tumor marker for different cancer types, including colorectal, breast, lung, and ovary. The present descriptive-experimental study was carried out including patients with malignant prostate tumor, patients with benign prostate tumor, and a group of health men as the control group, as judged by an oncologist as well as a pathologist. After sterile blood sampling, sHLA-G was measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay in each group. The data was then analyzed using one-way ANOVA. P≤0.05 was considered as statistically significant. The results showed that the mean of sHLA-G level was high in patients. Also, it was found that there was a significant difference in sHLA serum level between the three groups. The data revealed that sHLA-G can be a novel supplementary tumor marker in addition to PSA to diagnose prostate cancer.

Erratum to: Evaluation of sHLA-G levels in serum of patients with prostate cancer identify as a potential of tumor marker / 대한해부학회지

No abstract available.

Genomic Profiling of Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia: Basic and Clinical Approach

Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) is a hematological stem cell cancer driven by BCR-ABL1 fusion protein. We review the previous and recent evidence on the significance of CML in diagnostic and clinic management. The technical monitoring of BCR-ABL1 with quantitative real time-PCR has been used in assessing patient outcome. The cytogenetic mark of CML is Philadelphia chromosome, that is formed by reciprocal chromosomal translocations between human chromosome 9 and 22, t(9:22) (q³⁴:q¹¹). It makes a BCR-ABL1 fusion protein with an anomaly tyrosine kinase activity that promotes the characteristic proliferation of progenitor cells in CML and acute lymphoblastic lymphoma. The targeting of BCR-ABL1 fusion kinase is the first novel paradigm of molecularly targeted curing.

Spiritual Therapy in Coping with Cancer as a Complementary Medical Preventive Practice

There are many of methods of treating cancer. However, the concept of curing the cancer is beyond our current knowledge. Some patients who have the cancer may seek an alternative manner of curing their disease. Alternative medicines, such as spiritual and complementary therapy, are able to cure the cancer and, at the least, are safe. Research on the importance of spirituality in cancer care has mainly been performed in geographically heterogeneous populations. The results are limited to these specific religious-cultural contexts and enlightened by contributions from ethnicity and religion. This article focused on the religiousness and spiritual support of cancer patients from diverse and heterogeneous groups around the globe. An electronic search of peer-reviewed articles was systematically performed to obtain the relevant literature with the CINAHL, PsycINFO, and PubMed databases. The keywords included religion, cancer, illness, psychotherapy, and spiritual and alternative treatment/therapies. The inclusion criteria for the reviews were that the documents were original quantitative research and published in English. Articles that were not directly relevant to the present objective were excluded. The present outcome of these review resources suggest that it may be helpful for clinicians to address spirituality, particularly with regard to prevention, healing, and survival of cancer patients. This article indicates that it may be useful for clinical oncologists to be informed of the prevalence of the use of spiritual medicine in their specialized field. In addition, patients should routinely be asked about the use of spiritual medicine as part of every cancer patient' evaluation.

Glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase deficiency does not increase the susceptibility of sperm to oxidative stress induced by H₂O₂ / 대한생식의학회지

OBJECTIVE: Glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) deficiency is the most common human enzyme defect. G6PD plays a key role in the pentose phosphate pathway, which is a major source of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADPH). NADPH provides the reducing equivalents for oxidation-reduction reductions involved in protecting against the toxicity of reactive oxygen species such as H₂O₂. We hypothesized that G6PD deficiency may reduce the amount of NADPH in sperms, thereby inhibiting the detoxification of H₂O₂, which could potentially affect their motility and viability, resulting in an increased susceptibility to infertility. METHODS: Semen samples were obtained from four males with G6PD deficiency and eight healthy males as a control. In both groups, motile sperms were isolated from the seminal fluid and incubated with 0, 10, 20, 40, 60, 80, and 120 µM concentrations of H2O2. After 1 hour incubation at 37℃, sperms were evaluated for motility and viability. RESULTS: Incubation of sperms with 10 and 20 µM H₂O₂ led to very little decrease in motility and viability, but motility decreased notably in both groups in 40, 60, and 80 µM H₂O₂, and viability decreased in both groups in 40, 60, 80, and 120 µM H₂O₂. However, no statistically significant differences were found between the G6PD-deficient group and controls. CONCLUSION: G6PD deficiency does not increase the susceptibility of sperm to oxidative stress induced by H₂O₂, and the reducing equivalents necessary for protection against H₂O₂ are most likely produced by other pathways. Therefore, G6PD deficiency cannot be considered as major risk factor for male infertility.

Specific chromosomal abnormalities in patients with acute nonlymphocytic leukemia from the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Cytogenetic analysis performed at diagnosis is considered to be the most valuable prognostic factor in acute non-lymphocytic leukemia (ANLL), a very heterogeneous disease. Little data exist in Iran regarding the cytogenetic characteristics of ANLL . Therefore, cytogenetic investigations were performed for 58 patients with various subtypes of ANLL with unstimulated short term culture and high resolution cell synchronization techniques. Among the 58 evaluated patients, 45 (77.5%) showed clonal karyotypic abnormalities and the percentages of the abnormal cells were recorded within the range of 30%-100%. Some 14 were classified as M1, 20 as M2, 19 as M3 , 3 as M4, 1 as M5 and 1 as M6. The most common chromosome rearrangements were t(15;17), t( 8;21) and t(9;22). Trisomy of chromosome 8 (+8) was the most frequent numerical alteration in 3 patients with M1, M2 and M6. The incidence of other chromosomal defects, including -10, DMCs , -19 , 5q- , dicentric(dic), chromatid breaks, and marker chromosomes was relatively high. Similarities and dissimilarities of our study with others may be due to the role of genetic sensitivities as well as uneven geographic distribution in the pathogenesis of ANLL. Further prospective studies are warranted to precisely elucidate ethnic differences in the pathogenesis of this disease in different populations.