Publications by authors named "Chu Xia Deng"

The identification of ferroptosis-sensitive cancers is critical for the application of ferroptosis-inducing therapies in cancer therapy. Here, patient-derived organoid screening models of colorectal cancer are established to identify tumors that are sensitive to ferroptosis-inducing therapy. This study discovers that patient-derived tumors characterized by mitophagy deficiency are hypersensitive to ferroptosis-inducing therapies.

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RNA methylation is an important regulatory process to determine immune cell function but how it affects the anti-tumor activity of CD8 T cells is not fully understood. Here we show that the N-methyladenosine (mA) RNA reader YTHDF2 is highly expressed in early effector or effector-like CD8 T cells. We find that YTHDF2 facilitates nascent RNA synthesis, and mA recognition is fundamental for this distinctively nuclear function of the protein, which also reinforces its autoregulation at the RNA level.

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  • * The newly developed magnetic air bubble microrobots simplify structures while effectively enabling multiple functionalities such as cargo delivery, movement, imaging, and biosensing.
  • * By utilizing buoyancy and magnetic forces, these microrobots can navigate efficiently in biological environments, and their design improves ultrasound imaging and pH sensing capabilities for enhanced medical applications.
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  • Egg white-derived hydrogels (EW) are promising for cell culture because they can mimic the extracellular matrix, but their rigid structure limits use in living organisms.
  • This study introduces carbon dots as cross-linking agents to create a new hydrogel (CEWH) that has enhanced tensile strength and a pore structure that allows for better cell infiltration and tissue integration.
  • CEWH shows potential for long-term tissue regeneration and could be used as a wound dressing, indicating that egg white can be a versatile biomaterial for tissue engineering.
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  • * A new digital microfluidic system has been created to efficiently screen multiple drugs using these tumor cells, achieving high throughput with a compact design.
  • * Validations in mice and patient liver cancer samples indicate that the system can effectively identify suitable drugs for individual tumors, supporting its potential to improve precision medicine in cancer treatment.
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  • Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) evade destruction by natural killer (NK) cells in the immune system, aided by their tumor microenvironment (TME) and supportive mesenchymal stromal cells (MSCs).* -
  • This study reveals that MSCs enhance NK resistance in cancer cells through a specific signaling mechanism involving gap junctions and an intercellular communication pathway (cGAS-cGAMP-STING), leading to increased interferon-β production.* -
  • The increased interferon-β boosts HLA-I expression on tumor cells, protecting them from NK cell attacks; interrupting this signaling loop could make tumor cells more vulnerable and reduce metastasis.*
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Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease is a chronic liver abnormality that exhibits high variability and can lead to liver cancer in advanced stages. Hepatic ablation of SIRT6 results in fatty liver disease, yet the potential mechanism of SIRT6 deficiency, particularly in relation to downstream mediators for NAFLD, remains elusive. Here we identify Serpina12 as a key gene regulated by Sirt6 that plays a crucial function in energy homeostasis.

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Intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma (ICC) is the second most common malignancy among primary liver cancers, with an increasing overall incidence and poor prognosis. The intertumoral and intratumoral heterogeneity of ICC makes it difficult to find efficient drug therapies. Therefore, it is essential to identify tumor suppressor genes and oncogenes that induce ICC formation and progression.

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Chimeric antigen receptor (CAR)-modified natural killer (NK) cells are recognized as promising immunotherapeutic agents for cancer treatment. However, the efficacy and trafficking of CAR-NK cells in solid tumors are hindered by the complex barriers present in the tumor microenvironment (TME). We have developed a novel strategy that utilizes living CAR-NK cells as carriers to deliver anticancer drugs specifically to the tumor site.

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Purpose: Sarcoma is the second most common solid tumor type in children and adolescents. The high level of tumor heterogeneity as well as aggressive behavior of sarcomas brings serious difficulties to developing effective therapeutic strategies for clinical application. Therefore, it is of great importance to identify accurate biomarkers for early detection and prognostic prediction of sarcomas.

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  • Intestinal cancer is a common and serious type of cancer, and organoids have been developed in the past decade as a method to model it in the lab.
  • A new set of guidelines for creating and testing human intestinal cancer organoids has been established in China by experts, focusing on definitions and quality control.
  • Released on September 24, 2022, these guidelines aim to promote the proper practices in research and help standardize organoid use for clinical treatment.
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  • Drug combination therapy improves the effectiveness of anti-cancer drugs and helps combat drug resistance, but the vast number of possible combinations makes systematic testing impractical.
  • Researchers analyzed multiple drug combination datasets and identified specific drug pairs with a higher likelihood of synergy, classifying them by their mechanisms of action (MoA).
  • They developed machine learning models validated through experimental methods, revealing the effective combination of RTK inhibitors Lapatinib and Pazopanib for breast cancer, while also identifying potential biomarkers through protein-protein interaction networks.
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  • Organoids are valuable for disease modeling, drug discovery, and tissue research, but inconsistent quality control prevents wider clinical use.
  • The "Human Intestinal Organoids" guideline, created by Chinese experts, establishes key terms, technical requirements, and testing methods for quality control.
  • Released on September 24, 2022, this standard aims to improve protocols and promote international consistency in human intestinal organoid applications.
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Unlabelled: Cancer metastasis is an extremely complex process affected by many factors. An acidic microenvironment can drive cancer cell migration toward blood vessels while also hampering immune cell activity. Here, we identified a mechanism mediated by sialyltransferases that induces an acidic tumor-permissive microenvironment (ATPME) in BRCA1-mutant and most BRCA1-low breast cancers.

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  • Recent clinical updates suggest that preserving metastatic sentinel lymph nodes (SLNs) during breast cancer surgery may be beneficial, but their immune-boosting potential has not been fully explored.
  • Researchers developed a flex-patch that delivers anti-PD-1 antibodies and adjuvants to enhance the immune response in these SLNs after surgery.
  • The study shows that this approach can activate T cells and potentially improve long-term immunity against breast cancer recurrence in mouse models.
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  • Researchers developed metal-free carbon dots (CDs) that are biocompatible and can effectively induce cell death and kill antibiotic-resistant bacteria when exposed to visible light.
  • The CDs use their strong oxidation ability, generated from their unique surface structure, to create harmful hydroxyl radicals that help with antibacterial performance.
  • The study demonstrated that these CDs can also be used for photocatalytic tumor therapy in mice using a specific type of xenon lamp, showcasing their potential in medical applications.
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Sleeping Beauty (SB) insertional mutagenesis has been widely used for genome-wide functional screening in mouse models of human cancers, however, intertumor heterogeneity can be a major obstacle in identifying common insertion sites (CISs). Although previous algorithms have been successful in defining some CISs, they also miss CISs in certaations. A major common characteristic of these previous methods is that they do not take tumor heterogeneity into account.

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  • Breast cancer-associated gene 1 (Brca1) deficiency leads to the development of breast cancer and significant genetic changes.
  • Researchers used advanced techniques like the sleeping beauty transposon mutagenesis system and CRISPR-Cas9 to find genetic alterations that work together with Brca1 deficiency to promote tumors.
  • They identified Cullin-5 as a key tumor suppressor that, when mutated, helps cancer cells survive and progress by affecting the tumor microenvironment, which can be mitigated by targeting CREB1 signaling.
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Conventional techniques for in vitro cancer drug screening require labor-intensive formalin fixation, paraffin embedding, and dye staining of tumor tissues at fixed endpoints. This way of assessment discards the valuable pharmacodynamic information in live cells over time. Here, we found endogenous lipofuscin-like autofluorescence acutely accumulated in the cell death process.

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Rapid, efficient, and precise cancer therapy is highly desired. Here, this work reports solvothermally synthesized photoactivatable Pt(IV)-coordinated carbon dots (Pt-CDs) and their bovine serum albumin (BSA) complex (Pt-CDs@BSA) as a novel orange light-triggered anti-tumor therapeutic agent. The homogeneously distributed Pt(IV) in the Pt-CDs (Pt: 17.

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BRCA1 maintains genome stability by promoting homologous recombination (HR)-mediated DNA double-strand break (DSB) repair. Mutation of mouse BRCA1-S1152, corresponding to an ATM phosphorylation site in its human counterpart, resulted in increased genomic instability and tumor incidence. In this study, we report that BRCA1-S1152 is part of a feedback loop that sustains ATM activity.

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