HERC4 modulates ovarian cancer cell proliferation by regulating SMO-elicited hedgehog signaling.

BACKGROUND: HERC4 has been reported to have functions in several types of tumors, but its roles in ovarian cancer have not been studied yet. METHODS: Primary tissues from ovarian cancer patients and cell lines were collected for real-time PCR. Kaplan-Meier Plotter was used to predict the prognosis of ovarian cancer patients. HERC4 was overexpressed in cells by lentivirus, and CCK-8 assay was performed to evaluate cell viability. Real-time PCR and Western blot were carried out to analyze the mRNA and protein expression, respectively. Xenograft tumor models were established to analyze HERC4 function in vivo. RESULTS: Firstly, we found that HERC4 was significantly downregulated in ovarian cancer. We then found that ovarian cancer patients with high HERC4 expression had significantly higher overall survival and progression-free survival rates compared with patients with low expression. Then, HERC4 was overexpressed in ovarian cancer cells, and we found that overexpression of HERC4 significantly inhibited ovarian cancer cell growth, as well as the expression of the target protein SMO, and the key proteins in the downstream hedgehog signaling pathway. Finally, the xenograft tumor models revealed that overexpression of HERC4 significantly inhibited tumor growth in vivo. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, these results indicate that overexpression of HERC4 inhibits cell proliferation of ovarian cancer in vitro and in vivo, suggesting that HERC4 may serve as an effective target for the treatment of ovarian cancer.

Positively charged membranes for dye/salt separation based on a crossover combination of Mannich reaction and prebiotic chemistry.

With the advent of increasingly loose nanofiltration membranes for dye desalination, synthesis methods based on interfacial polymerization and bio-inspired materials such as polydopamine (pDA) have been investigated. However, the long polymerization time of pDA greatly limits the synthesis and application of fast dye/salt separation membranes. In this work, prebiotic chemistry-inspired aminomalononitrile (AMN) was used as a binder to co-deposit the Mannich reaction of tetrakis(hydroxymethyl)phosphonium chloride (THPC) and polyethyleneimine (PEI) to form the positively charged selective layer rapidly. The optimum membrane had a water permeance of 30.7 LMH bar-1 and a rejection of positively charged Victoria blue B (VBB, 200 ppm) and Na2SO4 (1 g/L) of 99.5 % and 9.9 %, respectively. Moreover, the results of a practical application test showed that it had excellent separation performance towards various positively charged dyes and salts. In addition, the actual application test results show that the membrane has good long-term stability during application. In terms of antifouling and antibacterial, the membrane has excellent antibacterial and antifouling properties., Further antibacterial tests were carried out, and the inactivation effect of the membrane on E. coli was also confirmed. The preparation method proposed in this work provides technical support for developing new dye/salt separation membranes.