Hyperresistinemia and metabolic dysregulation: a risky crosstalk in obese breast cancer.

Breast cancer is the most common malignancy among women worldwide. There is extensive literature on the relationship between body weight and breast cancer risk but some doubts still remain about the role of adipokines per se, the role of insulin and glucose regardless of obesity, as well as the crosstalk between these players. Thus, in this study, we intend to determine the relation between body mass index (BMI), glycaemia, insulinemia, insulin-resistance, blood adipokine levels and tumour characteristics in a Portuguese group of pre- and postmenopausal overweight/obese women with breast cancer.

Osteopontin and latent-TGF β binding-protein 2 as potential diagnostic markers for HBV-related hepatocellular carcinoma.

Chronic Hepatitis B (HB) is the main risk factor for chronic liver disease (CLD) and hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) in many low-resource countries, where diagnosis is constrained by lack of clinical, histopathological and biomarker resources. We have used proteomics to detect plasma biomarkers that outperform α-Fetoprotein (AFP), the most widely used biomarker for HCC diagnosis in low-resource contexts. Deep-plasma proteome analysis was performed in HCC patients, patients with CLD and in HB-carrier controls from Thailand (South-East Asia) and The Gambia (West-Africa).

Advanced glycation end products and diabetic nephropathy: a comparative study using diabetic and normal rats with methylglyoxal-induced glycation.

Hyperglycemia-related advanced glycation end product (AGE) formation is a key mechanism in diabetic nephropathy. Since methylglyoxal (MG) is a potent AGE precursor, we aimed to assess the role of MG-related AGE formation in the progression of renal damages. A comparative study between Wistar (W, normal) and Goto-Kakizaki (GK, nonobese type 2 diabetic) rats was performed at 6 and 14 months old and after 14 weeks of MG administration to 6-month-old rats.

Pyridoxamine reverts methylglyoxal-induced impairment of survival pathways during heart ischemia.

Background And Aims: Increased levels of advanced glycation end-products (AGE) and their precursors, such as methylglyoxal (MG), in patients with diabetes may account for impaired response to heart ischemia. Pyridoxamine is a derivate of vitamin B6, which has been shown to reduce AGE formation. Our goal was to assess the role of pyridoxamine in protecting from MG-induced impaired heart response to ischemia.

Reduction of methylglyoxal-induced glycation by pyridoxamine improves adipose tissue microvascular lesions.

Background and Aims. Adipose tissue dysfunction results from many factors, including glycation-induced microvascular damages. We tested the usefulness of inhibiting methylglyoxal-induced glycation to adipose tissue microvasculature in this work, using the antioxidant and dicarbonyl scavenger drug pyridoxamine.

Effects of Δ40p53, an isoform of p53 lacking the N-terminus, on transactivation capacity of the tumor suppressor protein p53.

Background: The p53 protein is expressed as multiple isoforms that differ in their N- and C-terminus due to alternative splicing, promoter or codon initiation usage. Δ40p53 lacks the first 39 residues containing the main transcriptional activation domain, resulting from initiation of translation at AUG +40 in fully spliced p53 mRNA or in a specific variant mRNA retaining intron 2. Overexpression of Δ40p53 antagonizes wild-type p53 in vitro.