Publications by authors named "Ke-ren Zhang"

Background And Objectives: Maintenance hemodialysis (MHD) patients are at a higher risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD), a common complication and leading cause of death. Persistent micro-inflammation is a unique feature of MHD. Given the established role of inflammation in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis, this study aims to explore whether novel inflammatory markers (inflammation index) can serve as independent risk factors for CVD in MHD patients.

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Article Synopsis
  • Maintenance hemodialysis (MHD) patients experience significant physical and mental stress, leading to high rates of depression, often linked to chronic inflammation; this study explores the systemic immune inflammation index (SII) as a potential marker for depression in these patients.
  • A cross-sectional study of 206 MHD patients revealed that 38.83% were depressed, and those with higher SII levels had a significantly increased risk of depression compared to those with lower levels.
  • The findings indicate that SII is an independent risk factor for depression in MHD patients, with a suggested cutoff value for predicting depressive symptoms.
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Article Synopsis
  • - The cGAS-STING pathway is important for immune response and tumor suppression, but when it's activated within cancer cells, it can lead to resistance against chemotherapy drugs.
  • - Chemotherapy causes cancer cells to accumulate cytosolic DNA, triggering the cGAS-STING pathway and related signaling, which helps the cells resist the effects of the drugs.
  • - Blocking STING signaling has been shown to delay and reduce this drug resistance in lab models, suggesting that combining STING activation with chemotherapy might not be effective and could require reevaluation in clinical trials.
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Resistance to epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) inhibitors, from the first-generation erlotinib to the third generation osimertinib, is a clinical challenge in the treatment of patients with EGFR-mutant lung adenocarcinoma. Our previous work found that a novel allosteric inhibitor of phosphoglycerate mutase 1 (PGAM1), HKB99, restrains erlotinib resistance in lung adenocarcinoma cells. However, the role of HKB99 in osimertinib resistance and its underlying molecular mechanism remains to be elucidated.

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Acquired resistance represents a bottleneck to molecularly targeted therapies such as epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) tyrosine kinase inhibitor (TKI) treatment in lung cancer. A deeper understanding of resistance mechanisms can provide insights into this phenomenon and help to develop additional therapeutic strategies to overcome or delay resistance. Here, we identified a pharmacologically targetable metabolic mechanism that drives resistance to EGFR TKIs in lung cancer cell lines and patient-derived xenograft mice.

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Epidermal growth factor receptor-tyrosine kinase inhibitors (EGFR-TKIs) have achieved satisfactory clinical effects in the therapy of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), but acquired resistance limits their clinical application. NRF2 has been shown to enhance the resistance to apoptosis induced by radiotherapy and some chemotherapy. In this study, we investigated the role of NRF2 in resistance to EGFR-TKIs.

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Changes in cellular metabolism accompany tumor therapeutic resistance. Metabolite concentrations specifically reflect the cellular state. Glutathione (GSH) metabolism maintains the redox homeostasis while also confers therapeutic resistance to cancer cells.

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Acquired resistance to epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR)-tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) such as erlotinib is a major challenge to achieve an overall clinical benefit of the targeted therapy. Recently, aldehyde dehydrogenase 1 (ALDH1) induction has been found to render lung adenocarcinomas resistant to EGFR-TKIs, and targeting ALDH1A1 becomes a novel strategy to overcome resistance. However, the molecular mechanism underlying such effect remains poorly understood.

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A novel ubiquitin-like antitumour protein (RBUP) was isolated from fruiting bodies of the edible mushroom Ramaria botrytis. The protein was isolated with a purification protocol involving ion exchange chromatography on DEAE-Sepharose fast flow and gel filtration on Sephadex G-75. SDS-PAGE, Native-PAGE and ultracentrifugation analysis disclosed that RBUP was a monomeric protein with a molecular weight of 18.

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The purpose of this study is to report the first nationwide protocol (Wuhan Protocol) developed by Chinese Children's Cancer Group and the results of multidisciplinary effort in treating hepatoblastoma. In this study, we reported the final analysis, which includes 153 hepatoblastoma patients in 13 hospitals from January 2006 to December 2013. The 6-year overall survival and event-free survival rates were 83.

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Neuroblastoma (NB) is the most common extracranial solid tumor in children. In this study, we investigated the potential antitumor capability of the engineered Edmonston strain of the carcinoembryonic antigen-expressing measles virus (MV-CEA) against human NB. The infection of a variety of NB cell lines, including SK-N-SH, SMS-KCNR, and primary NB cells, resulted in significant cytopathic effects.

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Alveolar soft part sarcoma (ASPS) is a rare soft tissue malignant neoplasm that affects young people. It can occur in any region of the body and at any stage of development. But ASPS on the abdominal wall is rarely reported.

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Thoracoabdominal foregut duplication is a rare congenital abnormality. The authors report a case of thoracoabdominal foregut duplication cyst in a 13-year-old male patient. The pathologic report revealed that a thoracic mass with a pseudostratified, ciliated, columnar epithelial lining (respiratory tract epithelium), an abdominal mass with gastric mucosa (alimentary tract epithelium), and the cyst originated from the foregut.

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Background: Gastrointestinal duplications are rare congenital abnormalities known to occur at any level of the alimentary tract from the mouth to the anus. The cause of intestinal duplication has not been established. Several theories have been put forward to explain different types of duplications.

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Eosinophilic granuloma is characterized by single or multiple skeletal lesions occurring predominantly in children, adolescents, and young adults, it accounts for 70% of Langerhans cell histiocytosis. The common sites are the skull, mandible, ribs, spines, and long bones particularly the femur and the humerus. Thoracic rib involvement is rarely seen.

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Objectives: Wilms tumor (WT) is one of the most common solid tumors in children. It also is the most frequent tumor found in the kidneys. In 5% of cases, it affects both kidneys simultaneously.

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Primary non-Hodgkin's lymphomas of the gastrointestinal tract are rare in children, and few of these lymphomas are located in the sigmoid colon. The preoperative diagnosis rate is low. Complete resection is indicated if it can be done safely.

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Castleman disease is a rare benign lymph node hyperplasia usually presenting as an asymptomatic mediastinal mass in children. It can present at any extrathoracic site where there is lymphoid tissue. The sites include retroperitoneum, mesentery, axilla, and pelvis.

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Objective: Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and its specific tryrosin kinase receptor-B (TrkB) are highly correlated to the chemoresistance of neuroblastoma (NB) cells and poor prognosis. This study observed the changes of the sensibility of NB cells to chemotherapy drug cisplatin (CDDP) before and after blockage of TrkB-BDNF signal pathway by specific tyrosin kinase inhibitor K252a.

Methods: Human NB cell line SH-SY5Y (SY5Y) was routinely cultured.

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Objective: To establish stable techniques of comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) and apply them to elucidate the genetic characteristics of hepatoblastoma (HB), and to explore the characteristics and clinical significance of loss of heterozygosity (LOH) at 1p36 in HB.

Methods: CGH was employed to detect the genomic imbalance (DNA loss or amplification) in 20 cases of HB, and PCR-simple repeated sequence polymorphism was employed in 30 cases of HB to detect the loss of heterozygosity for 6 satellites at chromosome 1p36.

Results: There were different chromosome variations for each HB.

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Objective: To estimate the clinical and pathological features of pancreatic solid cystic papillary tumor (SCPT) in children.

Methods: From 2000 to 2005, 8 cases with SCPT of the pancreas were analyzed retrospectively. All cases but one were females.

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