Publications by authors named "M-K Lee"

Intercellular mitochondria transfer is an evolutionarily conserved process in which one cell delivers some of their mitochondria to another cell in the absence of cell division. This process has diverse functions depending on the cell types involved and physiological or disease context. Although mitochondria transfer was first shown to provide metabolic support to acceptor cells, recent studies have revealed diverse functions of mitochondria transfer, including, but not limited to, the maintenance of mitochondria quality of the donor cell and the regulation of tissue homeostasis and remodelling.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

mRNA delivery offers new opportunities for disease treatment by directing cells to produce therapeutic proteins. However, designing highly stable mRNAs with programmable cell type-specificity remains a challenge. To address this, we measured the regulatory activity of 60,000 5' and 3' untranslated regions (UTRs) across six cell types and developed PARADE (Prediction And RAtional DEsign of mRNA UTRs), a generative AI framework to engineer untranslated RNA regions with tailored cell type-specific activity.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Context: Approximately 11% of cancer survivors smoke postdiagnosis.

Objectives: Understanding the relationship between smoking and perceived cancer-related symptoms may inform tobacco treatment interventions for this population.

Methods: From 2017 to 2021, 740 adults in 9 ECOG-ACRIN trials provided baseline data.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) arises from liver cells (hepatocytes) that are damaged and undergoing compensatory growth, particularly due to metabolic disorders like MASH.
  • The tumor-suppressive effects of p53 and the anti-cancer role of the enzyme FBP1 are undermined in HCC, as FBP1 is commonly degraded and suppressed in tumors.
  • Key metabolic pathways involving AKT and NRF2 play a role in reversing the effects of cellular senescence, boosting the growth of HCC cells and leading to the accumulation of genetic mutations that contribute to cancer progression.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Heart transplantation remains a critical therapy for patients with end-stage heart failure, offering incremental survival and improved quality of life. One of the key components behind the success of heart transplantation is the condition and preservation of the donor's heart. In this review, we provide a comprehensive overview of ischemic reperfusion injury, risk factors associated with primary graft dysfunction, current use of various preservation solutions for organ procurement, and recent advancements in donor heart procurement technologies.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Study Design: Retrospective cohort.

Objective: To analyze the annual trends in the most prevalent topics, journals, and geographic regions of the top 100 spine surgery articles, as determined by altmetric attention scores (AASs). We also describe the relationship between AAS and traditional article metrics.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Study Question: Is there an association between the somatic loss of PTEN (phosphatase and tensin homolog) and ARID1A (AT-rich interaction domain 1A) and endometriosis disease severity and worse clinical outcomes?

Summary Answer: Somatic PTEN loss in endometriosis epithelium was associated with greater disease burden and subsequent surgical complexity.

What Is Known Already: Somatic cancer-driver mutations including those involving the PTEN and ARID1A genes exist in endometriosis without cancer; however, their clinical impact remains unclear.

Study Design, Size, Duration: This prospective longitudinal study involved endometriosis tissue and clinical data from 126 participants who underwent surgery at a tertiary center for endometriosis (2013-2017), with a follow-up period of 5-9 years.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

KRAS is an important oncogenic driver which is mutated in numerous cancers. Recent advances in the selective targeting of KRAS mutants via small molecule inhibitors and targeted protein degraders have generated an increase in research activity in this area in recent years. As such, there is a need for new assay platforms to profile next generation inhibitors which improve on the potency and selectivity of existing drug candidates, while evading the emergence of resistance.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Idiopathic interstitial pneumonias (IIPs), such as idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis and interstitial pneumonia with autoimmune features, present diagnostic and therapeutic challenges due to their heterogeneous nature. This study aimed to identify intrinsic molecular signatures within the lung microenvironment of these IIPs through proteomic analysis of bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF).

Methods: Patients with IIP (n=23) underwent comprehensive clinical evaluation including pre-treatment bronchoscopy and were compared with controls without lung disease (n=5).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Glioblastoma (GBM) is the deadliest brain tumor in adults, and current therapies are largely ineffective, which drives the need for new treatment strategies based on the tumor's metabolic needs, specifically glucose and glutamine.
  • A ketogenic metabolic therapy (KMT) approach targets these metabolic pathways by combining dietary changes with specific drugs to limit glycolysis and glutaminolysis, while promoting the use of non-fermentable fuels like ketones and fatty acids.
  • The glucose-ketone index (GKI) serves as a biomarker to monitor treatment effectiveness, aiming to create a more hostile environment for tumor growth and improve outcomes in GBM as well as potentially other cancer types reliant on similar metabolic pathways.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Rhinovirus C (RV-C) infection can trigger asthma exacerbations in children and adults, and RV-C-induced wheezing illnesses in preschool children correlate with the development of childhood asthma. Surfactant protein A (SP-A) plays a critical role in regulating pulmonary innate immunity by binding to numerous respiratory pathogens. Mature SP-A consists of multiple isoforms that form the hetero-oligomers of SP-A1 and SP-A2, organized in 18-mers.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The study highlights the variable progression of Alzheimer's disease (AD), emphasizing the importance of early detection, especially in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) cases.
  • Machine learning models were used to analyze gene expression data from different stages of AD, successfully identifying biomarkers that differentiate MCI from cognitively unimpaired individuals and predict progression to AD.
  • The research underscores the potential of combining machine learning with transcriptomic data to create new diagnostic tools and treatments to delay or prevent AD, calling for further validation of the findings in larger studies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Physician-industry financial relationships can drive research and innovation, improving patient care and outcomes, but potentially raise ethical concerns if not disclosed appropriately. This study shows high rates of non-disclosures by authors/presenters at the ASNR 2024 annual meeting, despite strict requirements. 86.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background And Purpose: Rescue stent (RS) is an accepted rescue option after failed mechanical thrombectomy (MT) for acute ischemic stroke due to intracranial atherosclerotic stenosis (ICAS)-related large vessel occlusion (LVO). However, the long-term outcomes (≥ 12 months) of RS have not yet been elucidated.

Materials And Methods: We retrospectively analyzed the data of 154 patients with RS for ICAS-related LVO, which were identified from prospectively maintained multicenter database of RS after MT failure, to assess good outcome (mRS 0-2), mortality, stroke recurrence, symptomatic intracranial hemorrhage (SICH) and stent patency.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Early integration of palliative care (PC) in inpatient oncology significantly improved patient outcomes, shifting more decedents to receive both inpatient and outpatient PC.
  • The implementation of a criteria-based PC consultation model resulted in earlier consultations and a reduced need for intensive care and hospitalizations in the last month of life.
  • Overall, this approach led to longer hospice stays and more deaths occurring at home, indicating a less aggressive end-of-life care strategy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Cancers are driven by alterations in diverse genes, creating dependencies that can be therapeutically targeted. However, many genetic dependencies have proven inconsistent across tumors. Here we describe SCHEMATIC, a strategy to identify a core network of highly penetrant, actionable genetic interactions.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Mineralocorticoid receptor antagonists have been shown to reduce mortality in patients after myocardial infarction with congestive heart failure. Whether routine use of spironolactone is beneficial after myocardial infarction is uncertain.

Methods: In this multicenter trial with a 2-by-2 factorial design, we randomly assigned patients with myocardial infarction who had undergone percutaneous coronary intervention to receive either spironolactone or placebo and either colchicine or placebo.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background And Objectives: Epidemiologic studies suggest increasing incidence and prevalence of myasthenia gravis (MG) among the elderly population outside the United States. We aimed to provide an estimation of MG incidence and prevalence and their trend among the Medicare Fee-For-Service (FFS)-covered elderly US population.

Methods: We performed a retrospective longitudinal study using Medicare claims data (2006-2019).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Transfer RNA halves (tRHs) have various biological functions. However, the biogenesis of specific 5'-tRHs under certain conditions remains unknown. Here, we report that inositol-requiring enzyme 1α (IRE1α) cleaves the anticodon stem-loop region of tRNA to produce 5'-tRHs (5'-tRH-Gly) with highly selective target discrimination upon endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Latrophilin-2 (Lphn2), an adhesive GPCR (G protein-coupled receptor), was found to be a specific marker of cardiac progenitors during the differentiation of pluripotent stem cells into cardiomyocytes or during embryonic heart development in our previous studies. Its role in adult heart physiology, however, remains unclear.

Methods: The embryonic lethality resulting from deletion necessitates the establishment of cardiomyocyte-specific, tamoxifen-inducible knockout mice, which was achieved by crossing mice with mice having MerCreMer (tamoxifen-inducible Cre [Cyclization recombinase] recombinase) under the α-myosin heavy chain promoter.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • - Recent advancements in multiplexed tissue imaging are improving our understanding of tumor microenvironments, which could better inform treatment responses and disease progression studies.
  • - Despite its popularity, current analysis methods face challenges such as high computational demands and a lack of consistent strategies for understanding spatial features in images as diseases progress.
  • - The newly introduced spatial topic model effectively integrates cell type and spatial data, demonstrating strong performance in identifying significant spatial topics and tracking changes during disease progression, making it efficient for large-scale tissue imaging analyses.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Hyperadrenocorticism (HAC) is a common endocrine disorder in dogs, which is associated with diverse metabolic abnormalities. We hypothesized that elevated cortisol levels in dogs with HAC disrupt the gut microbiome (GM), and this disruption persists even after trilostane treatment. This study explored GM composition in dogs with HAC.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Dual immune checkpoint blockade (ICB) using CTLA4 and PD-(L)1 inhibitors shows improved anti-tumor effectiveness and immune toxicity compared to PD-(L)1 inhibitors alone in advanced non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients.
  • Patients with mutations in STK11 and/or KEAP1 genes benefit more from the combination treatment compared to those receiving only PD-(L)1 inhibitors, as shown in the POSEIDON trial.
  • The loss of KEAP1 serves as a strong predictor for the success of dual ICB, as it leads to a more favorable outcome by changing the tumor's immune environment to better engage CD4 and CD8 T cells for anti-tumor activity. *
View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Small interfering RNAs (siRNAs) have the potential to target and silence difficult disease-related genes, providing new ways to treat diseases.* -
  • While delivering siRNAs to the liver via N-acetylgalactosamine (GalNAc) has proven effective, delivering siRNAs to other cell types remains a challenge.* -
  • Research shows that certain cellular mechanisms, including retrograde transport and lipid droplets, can enhance the effectiveness of siRNA delivery and gene silencing in both liver and non-liver cell types.*
View Article and Find Full Text PDF