[Rehabilitation after intercurrent morbid event of patients suffering from neurocognitive disorders in a pilot unit: management and outcomes].

People suffering from a neurodegenerative disease, at a stage still allowing physical activity, encounter more difficulties to access to re-education and rehabilitation care. A trial unit specialized in medical care and rehabilitation (SMR) was created to handle these patients, who suffered a morbid intercurrent event not related to the neurocognitive disorder. The trial unit was created thanks to a dedicated funding from the Brittany Health Regional Agency (ARS) following-up a call for projects in October 2021.

Protect and serve: Bcl-2 proteins as guardians and rulers of cancer cell survival.

It is widely accepted that anti-apoptotic Bcl-2 family members promote cancer cell survival by binding to their pro-apoptotic counterparts, thereby preventing mitochondrial outer membrane permeabilization (MOMP) and cytotoxic caspase activation. Yet, these proteins do not only function as guardians of mitochondrial permeability, preserving it, and maintaining cell survival in the face of acute or chronic stress, they also regulate non-apoptotic functions of caspases and biological processes beyond MOMP from diverse subcellular localizations and in complex with numerous binding partners outside of the Bcl-2 family. In particular, some of the non-canonical effects and functions of Bcl-2 homologs lead to an interplay with E2F-1, NFκB, and Myc transcriptional pathways, which themselves influence cancer cell growth and survival.

Serum-nutrient starvation induces cell death mediated by Bax and Puma that is counteracted by p21 and unmasked by Bcl-x(L) inhibition.

The cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor p21 (p21WAF1/Cip1) is a multifunctional protein known to promote cell cycle arrest and survival in response to p53-dependent and p53 independent stimuli. We herein investigated whether and how it might contribute to the survival of cancer cells that are in low-nutrient conditions during tumour growth, by culturing isogenic human colorectal cancer cell lines (HCT116) and breast cancer cell lines in a medium deprived in amino acids and serum. We show that such starvation enhances, independently from p53, the expression of p21 and that of the pro-apoptotic BH3-only protein Puma.