Extracellular vesicles: A new paradigm in understanding, diagnosing and treating neurodegenerative disease.

Neurodegenerative disorders (NDs) are becoming one of the leading causes of disability and death across the globe due to lack of timely preventions and treatments. Concurrently, intensive research efforts are being carried out to understand the etiology of these age-dependent disorders. Extracellular vesicles (EVs)-biological nanoparticles released by cells-are gaining tremendous attention in understanding their role in pathogenesis and progression of NDs.

Sieved mass and shape data from simulated fluvial transport of icy clasts in the Titan Tumbler.

Data in this article are related to the research article "Rapid rounding of icy clasts during simulated fluvial transport in the Titan Tumbler". Whereas that research focused on low-temperature ice abrasion in the context of Saturn's moon Titan, the full dataset on experiments testing the breakdown of water ice under a variety of tested conditions is reported in this article. Following the work of previous terrestrial studies, these experiments utilize tumblers that produce collisions to simulate some aspects of mechanical weathering during fluvial transport.

Habitability Models for Astrobiology.

Habitability has been generally defined as the capability of an environment to support life. Ecologists have been using Habitat Suitability Models (HSMs) for more than four decades to study the habitability of Earth from local to global scales. Astrobiologists have been proposing different habitability models for some time, with little integration and consistency among them, being different in function to those used by ecologists.

Translocations Constitute Ependymoma Chromatin Remodeling and Transcription Factors.

()-a gene of unknown function-partners with a variety of transcriptional coactivators in translocations that drive supratentorial ependymoma, a frequently lethal brain tumor. Understanding the function of is key to developing therapies that inhibit these fusion proteins. Here, using a combination of transcriptomics, chromatin immunoprecipitation sequencing, and proteomics, we interrogated a series of deletion-mutant genes to identify a tripartite transformation mechanism of ZFTA-containing fusions, including: spontaneous nuclear translocation, extensive chromatin binding, and SWI/SNF, SAGA, and NuA4/Tip60 HAT chromatin modifier complex recruitment.

Comparison of tumor-associated YAP1 fusions identifies a recurrent set of functions critical for oncogenesis.

YAP1 is a transcriptional coactivator and the principal effector of the Hippo signaling pathway, which is causally implicated in human cancer. Several gene fusions have been identified in various human cancers and identifying the essential components of this family of gene fusions has significant therapeutic value. Here, we show that the gene fusions , , , and are oncogenic in mice.

DDX3X Suppresses the Susceptibility of Hindbrain Lineages to Medulloblastoma.

DEAD-Box Helicase 3 X-Linked (DDX3X) is frequently mutated in the Wingless (WNT) and Sonic hedghog (SHH) subtypes of medulloblastoma-the commonest malignant childhood brain tumor, but whether DDX3X functions as a medulloblastoma oncogene or tumor suppressor gene is not known. Here, we show that Ddx3x regulates hindbrain patterning and development by controlling Hox gene expression and cell stress signaling. In mice predisposed to Wnt- or Shh medulloblastoma, Ddx3x sensed oncogenic stress and suppressed tumor formation.

Actinomycin D downregulates Sox2 and improves survival in preclinical models of recurrent glioblastoma.

Background: Glioblastoma (GBM) has been extensively researched over the last few decades, yet despite aggressive multimodal treatment, recurrence is inevitable and second-line treatment options are limited. Here, we demonstrate how high-throughput screening (HTS) in multicellular spheroids can generate physiologically relevant patient chemosensitivity data using patient-derived cells in a rapid and cost-effective manner. Our HTS system identified actinomycin D (ACTD) to be highly cytotoxic over a panel of 12 patient-derived glioma stemlike cell (GSC) lines.

A novel photosensitizer: An l-glutamide lipid conjugate with improved properties for photodynamic therapy.

Photosensitizers (PS) are used in photodynamic therapy to treat several cancers. The efficacy of photodynamic therapy (PDT) could be further improved by overcoming aggregation-dependent quenching of PS and by improving the biodistribution of the PS. In this work we attempted to overcome these issues by conjugating a PS with a lipid molecule and tested the liposomes prepared with this PS conjugated lipid for PDT.