Publications by authors named "Meena Kusi"

Lung cancer is the leading cause of global cancer-related mortality resulting in ∼ 1.8 million deaths annually. Systemic, molecular targeted, and immune therapies have provided significant improvements of survival outcomes for patients.

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  • Tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) play a key role in shaping tumor microenvironments and can change their functions based on signals they receive from lung cancer cells and cancer-associated fibroblasts.
  • AXL-STAT3 signaling in TAMs leads to their transformation into a tumor-supporting "M2-like" phenotype, marked by increased expression of CD163 and CD44, which helps them interact with blood vessel cells.
  • Blocking AXL-STAT3 signaling in a mouse model can reduce the recruitment of TAMs, decrease tumor growth, and suggests that monitoring AXL-STAT3 markers could aid in predicting cancer spread and developing treatments for lung cancer.
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The epigenome delineates lineage-specific transcriptional programs and restricts cell plasticity to prevent non-physiological cell fate transitions. Although cell diversification fosters tumor evolution and therapy resistance, upstream mechanisms that regulate the stability and plasticity of the cancer epigenome remain elusive. Here we show that 2-hydroxyglutarate (2HG) not only suppresses DNA repair but also mediates the high-plasticity chromatin landscape.

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Among single-cell analysis technologies, single-cell RNA-seq (scRNA-seq) has been one of the front runners in technical inventions. Since its induction, scRNA-seq has been well received and undergone many fast-paced technical improvements in cDNA synthesis and amplification, processing and alignment of next generation sequencing reads, differentially expressed gene calling, cell clustering, subpopulation identification, and developmental trajectory prediction. scRNA-seq has been exponentially applied to study global transcriptional profiles in all cell types in humans and animal models, healthy or with diseases, including cancer.

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  • The balance between glycolysis and mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) is crucial for energy regulation in cells, especially in cancer.
  • Menin plays a significant role as a transcription factor that controls the genes involved in both OXPHOS and glycolysis, especially in tumors with poor prognoses.
  • Menin-associated proteins (MAPs) interact with menin to modulate this regulation, influencing ATP production and cell metabolism, allowing cells to adapt to changing environments effectively.
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Background: Chromothripsis is an event of genomic instability leading to complex chromosomal alterations in cancer. Frequent long-range chromatin interactions between transcription factors (TFs) and targets may promote extensive translocations and copy-number alterations in proximal contact regions through inappropriate DNA stitching. Although studies have proposed models to explain the initiation of chromothripsis, few discussed how TFs influence this process for tumor progression.

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