Publications by authors named "Benkui Zou"

Article Synopsis
  • The FDA has approved various treatments for advanced metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC), which includes both anti-vascular TKIs and immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs), but selecting the best treatment order for improved survival is still unclear.
  • This study aimed to assess the overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) in mRCC patients based on treatment sequences involving TKIs and anti PD-1 therapies at a cancer hospital in Shandong, China.
  • Analysis involved 135 patients and highlighted that the treatment order affected survival outcomes, with some receiving anti PD-1 alone or combined with TKIs, allowing for comparisons of their effectiveness.
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Underestimation of the complexity of pathogenesis in nonalcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH) significantly encumbers development of new drugs and targeted therapy strategies. Inactive rhomboid protein 2 (IRHOM2) has a multifunctional role in regulating inflammation, cell survival, and immunoreaction. Although cytokines and chemokines promote IRHOM2 trafficking or cooperate with partner factors by phosphorylation or ubiquitin ligases-mediated ubiquitination to perform physiological process, it remains unknown whether other regulators induce IRHOM2 activation via different mechanisms in NASH progression.

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Background: Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are considered useful prognostic factors for various cancers, and in 2014, our research group conducted a comparative experiment of CTC detection in patients with renal cell cancer (RCC). However, the reason for the low detection rate of CTCs in cancer patients using the CellSearch system is still unknown, although it has been hypothesized to be attributed to the likelihood that CTCs undergoing epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) do not express the CTC biomarkers cytokeratin (CK)8/18/19 or epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM). The overall aim of the current study was to investigate the expression levels of CK8/18/19 and EpCAM in relation to the EMT biomarkers vimentin and E-cadherin in patients with RCC.

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Background: Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is one of the most common and lethal human urological malignancies around the world. Although many advancements in diagnostic and therapeutic strategies have been acquired, the prognosis of patients with metastatic RCC was poor. Thus, there is an urgent need to understand the molecular mechanism of RCC.

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Systemic metabolic syndrome significantly increases the risk of morbidity and mortality in patients with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) and non-alcoholic steatohepatitis (NASH). However, no effective therapeutic strategies are available, practically because our understanding of its complicated pathogenesis is poor. Here we identify the tripartite motif-containing protein 31 (Trim31) as an endogenous inhibitor of rhomboid 5 homolog 2 (Rhbdf2), and we further determine that Trim31 directly binds to Rhbdf2 and facilitates its proteasomal degradation.

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Renal cell carcinoma is the second malignant tumors in the urinary system with high mortality and morbidity. Increasing evidence suggests that long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) play critical roles in tumor development and progression. In the current study, based on the publicly available data obtained from GEO and TCGA database, we identified five prognosis-related lncRNAs with the ability to predict the prognosis of patients with renal cell carcinoma.

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BACKGROUND The purpose of this study was to compare circulating tumor cells (CTCs)/circulating tumor microemboli (CTM) detection rates of the CellSearch and CTC-Biopsy systems in patients with gastric cancer (GC). We also investigated potential correlations between clinicopathological characteristics and prognosis in patients with GC. MATERIAL AND METHODS This prospective study was conducted at the Shandong Institute of Cancer Prevention and Control in China.

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Background/aims: Detection of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in cancer patients has diagnostic and prognostic importance. However, the clinical implications of CTC detection in patients with renal cell carcinoma (RCC) are still unclear. In this study, we investigated the clinical significance of CTCs using two detection systems, the CellSearch system (CSS) and isolation by size of epithelial tumor cells (ISET), among RCC patients.

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MicroRNAs (miRs) are involved in the development and progression of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), but the regulatory mechanism of miR-98 in HCC still remains unclear. Here we found that miR-98 was significantly downregulated in HCC tissues compared to matched adjacent normal tissues (ANTs). Low miR-98 expression was associated with tumor size, metastasis, portal vein tumor embolus, and poor overall survival.

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In several epithelial malignancies, detection of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) in the peripheral blood has diagnostic, prognostic, and therapeutic implications. However, the clinical relevance of CTCs in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) has not yet been ascertained. The study was conducted with the aim of determining the clinical significance of CTCs in patients with ESCC by using 2 CTC detection systems, one epithelial marker-dependent and the other epithelial marker-independent.

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Detection of circulating tumor cells (CTCs) has been made to develop reliable assays for early diagnosis of various cancers. Overexpression of survivin in cancer cells is strongly associated with tumor progression. Although upregulation of survivin is observed in various tumors, its expression profile in the peripheral blood of prostate cancer (PCa) patients has not yet been investigated.

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Background And Aim: Combination chemotherapy is emerging in the management of advanced penile cancer. However, evidence-based chemotherapeutic regimens in the current guidelines are lacking. The aim of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of preoperative neoadjuvant chemotherapy combined with a BMP regimen including bleomycin (BLM), methopterin (MTX) and cisplatin (DDP) for treating advanced penile cancer patients.

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Background: Identifying novel tumor biomarkers to develop more effective diagnostic and therapeutic strategies for patients with ACC is urgently needed. The aim of the study was to compare the proteomic profiles between adrenocortical carcinomas (ACC) and normal adrenocortical tissues in order to identify novel potential biomarkers for ACC.

Methods: The protein samples from 12 ACC tissues and their paired adjacent normal adrenocortical tissues were profiled with two-dimensional electrophoresis; and differentially expressed proteins were identified by mass spectrometry.

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