Publications by authors named "Luciana Oliveira-Cruz"
Alzheimer's disease is a neurodegenerative condition affecting millions of people worldwide. Alzheimer's symptoms include memory loss and cognitive decline. Pathologically, the hallmarks of Alzheimer´s are the presence of Amyloid beta-plaques, neurofibrillary tangles, and neuronal loss.
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- Knockdown of antisense noncoding mitochondrial RNAs (ASncmtRNAs) causes apoptosis in cancer cells without affecting normal cells, indicating potential for targeted cancer therapy.
- In vitro studies showed that targeting ASncmtRNAs induces cell death in mouse renal adenocarcinoma cells but spares healthy kidney cells.
- In vivo experiments demonstrated that treatment with ASncmtRNA knockdown not only inhibited tumor growth and metastasis in a more natural kidney environment but also improved survival rates in mice.
Article Synopsis
- Researchers discovered that targeting antisense noncoding mitochondrial RNAs (ASncmtRNAs) can selectively induce apoptosis in human tumor cells while sparing normal cells, indicating a promising cancer therapy approach.
- They characterized murine ncmtRNAs and demonstrated that their structure resembles human versions, confirming the potential for translatable treatment methods in melanoma.
- In vivo studies showed that specific antisense oligonucleotide (ASO) treatment led to reduced tumor growth and metastasis in mouse melanoma models, suggesting ASncmtRNAs are viable non-nuclear targets for melanoma therapy.
Hallmarks of cancer are fundamental principles involved in cancer progression. We propose an additional generalized hallmark of malignant transformation corresponding to the differential expression of a family of mitochondrial ncRNAs (ncmtRNAs) that comprises sense and antisense members, all of which contain stem-loop structures. Normal proliferating cells express sense (SncmtRNA) and antisense (ASncmtRNA) transcripts.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe study of RNA and DNA oncogenic viruses has proved invaluable in the discovery of key cellular pathways that are rendered dysfunctional during cancer progression. An example is high risk human papillomavirus (HPV), the etiological agent of cervical cancer. The role of HPV oncogenes in cellular immortalization and transformation has been extensively investigated.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe report the results of a transcript finishing initiative, undertaken for the purpose of identifying and characterizing novel human transcripts, in which RT-PCR was used to bridge gaps between paired EST clusters, mapped against the genomic sequence. Each pair of EST clusters selected for experimental validation was designated a transcript finishing unit (TFU). A total of 489 TFUs were selected for validation, and an overall efficiency of 43.
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