Substrate stiffness promotes latent TGF-β1 activation in hepatocellular carcinoma.

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) was usually coupled with increased stiffness of the extracellular matrix (ECM) and elevated level of transforming growth factor-β1 (TGF-β1). However, the mechanism by which substrate rigidity modulated TGF-β1 signaling transduction remained unknown. This paper investigated the molecular mechanism of how matrix stiffness regulating TGF-β1 signaling in HCC cells.

Improved-throughput traction microscopy based on fluorescence micropattern for manual microscopy.

Traction force microscopy (TFM) is a quantitative technique for measuring cellular traction force, which is important in understanding cellular mechanotransduction processes. Traditional TFM has a significant limitation in that it has a low measurement throughput, commonly one per TFM dish, due to a lack of cell position information. To obtain enough cellular traction force data, an onerous workload is required including numerous TFM dish preparations and heavy cell-seeding activities, creating further difficulty in achieving identical experimental conditions among batches.

Lentiviral vector-mediated doxycycline-inducible iASPP gene targeted RNA interference in hepatocellular carcinoma.

Background And Objective: iASPP, an inhibitory member of the apoptosis-stimulating proteins of p53 (ASPP) family, has been found to be up-regulated in various human tumor types. This study was to construct an efficient doxycycline-regulated, lentiviral vector-mediated knockdown system for iASPP that will allow for inducible down-regulation of iASPP gene expression and preliminary functional analysis.

Methods: A pair of complementary oligos with hairpin structures targeting the iASPP gene and a negative control were synthesized, then ligated with pLVTHM vector and sequenced.

Increased expression of iASPP, regulated by hepatitis B virus X protein-mediated NF-κB activation, in hepatocellular carcinoma.

Background & Aims: iASPP is an inhibitory member of the ankyrin-repeat-, SH3-domain- and proline-rich-region-containing protein (ASPP) family; iASPP expression is up-regulated in different human tumor types. We explored the molecular mechanism increased expression of iASPP and its role in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC).

Methods: iASPP expression levels in human liver samples and cell lines were determined by polymerase chain reaction, immunoblot, and immunohistochemical analyses.

Decreased TIP30 expression promotes tumor metastasis in lung cancer.

The HIV Tat-interacting protein (TIP30), also called CC3 or HTIP2, is encoded by Tip30, a putative tumor-suppressor gene located on human chromosome 11p15.1. In this study, we investigated the role of TIP30 in the progression and metastasis of lung cancer.