ants and Breast-Neoplasms

The screening of compounds with endocrine disrupting effects has been attracting increasing attention due to the continuous release of emerging chemicals into the environment. Testing the (ant)agonistic activities of these chemicals on the retinoic acid receptor α (RARα), a vital nuclear receptor, is necessary to explain their perturbation in the endocrine system in vivo. In the present study, MCF-7 breast carcinoma cells were transiently transfected with a RARα expression vector (pEF1α-RARα-RFP) and a reporter vector containing a retinoic acid reaction element (pRARE-TA-Luc). Under optimized conditions, the performance of the newly constructed system was evaluated for its feasibility in screening the (ant)agonistic effects of emerging phenolic compounds on RARα. The results showed that this transient transfection cell model responded well to stimulation with (ant)agonists of RARα, and the EC

Topics: Animals; Ants; Biological Assay; Breast Neoplasms; Early Detection of Cancer; Female; Humans; MCF-7 Cells; Phenols; Receptors, Retinoic Acid; Transfection

Breast cancer (BC) is a major contributor of cancer-associated mortality in women. It is essential to find new therapeutic targets and drugs. Polyrhachis vicina Rogers is one of the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). Our previous studies have shown an active fraction of Polyrhachis vicina Rogers (AFPR) has significant anti-inflammatory activity, suggesting its anti-cancer effect. Here, we aimed to explore the inhibitory effects of AFPR on BC and reveal its mechanism. The effects of AFPR on BC were examined by cell proliferation assay, wound healing assay, invasion assay and xenograft assay. Microarray sequencing, qRT-PCR, Western blot, chromatin immunoprecipitation assay and luciferase reporter assay were performed to investigate the regulation of AFPR on related genes and underlying mechanisms. As a result, AFPR suppressed BC cell growth, migration and invasion and inhibited tumor growth. LncRNA NKILA was most prominently upregulated in AFPR-treated MCF7 cells. AFPR inactivated NF-κB signaling pathway via regulating NKILA. Furthermore, AFPR regulated the expression of NKILA by inhibiting its transcript suppressor EGR1. This study firstly indicated that AFPR was a potential inhibitor of BC development via regulating EGR1/NKILA/NF-κB axis.

Topics: Animals; Ants; Breast Neoplasms; Cell Movement; Chemical Fractionation; Early Growth Response Protein 1; Female; Gene Expression Regulation, Neoplastic; Humans; Male; MCF-7 Cells; Medicine, Chinese Traditional; Mice, Nude; Neoplasm Invasiveness; Neoplasms, Experimental; NF-kappa B; RNA, Long Noncoding; Up-Regulation

Susceptible barcode recognition plays an important role in the diagnosis and treatment of complex diseases. Numerous approaches have been proposed to identify risky barcodes involved in the progress of complex diseases. However, some methods only consider differences in barcode frequencies between the control and disease groups; as such, these methods may be partial or even wrong. For example, some barcodes with a high risk ratio yield a low frequency on cases or exhibit a high frequency on controls, which may unreasonable from a statistical point.. In our study, a stricter criteria, maximum discrepancy and maximum constituency, is designed to evaluate each barcode and ant colony algorithm is used to search combination space of epistasis. For complex diseases with multi-subtypes, our method can list several potential barcodes contributing to different subtypes of complex diseases. Another contribution of this work is to introduce a method for determining the length of barcodes and excluding noisy barcodes whose frequencies are abnormal. In addition, common pathogenic genes shared by different risky barcodes are also recognized, which may provide key clue for further study, such as gene function analysis.. Experimental results reveal that our method can find multiple risky barcodes whose risk ratio and odds ratio are >1. These barcodes could be related to different subtypes of complex diseases.

Topics: Algorithms; Animals; Ants; Breast Neoplasms; DNA Barcoding, Taxonomic; Female; Humans; Models, Genetic; Polymorphism, Single Nucleotide; Risk Factors