Publications by authors named "Nefertiti Elnikhely"

Cancer cells can escape death and surveillance by the host immune system in various ways. Programmed cell death ligand 1 (PD-L1) is a transmembrane protein that is expressed by most cell types, including cancer cells, and can provide an inhibitory signal to its receptor PD-1, which is expressed on the surface of activated T cells, impairing the immune response. PD-L1/PD-1-mediated immune evasion is observed in several KRAS-mutated cancers.

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Background: The objectives of the current study were to extract pyocyanin from Pseudomonas aeruginosa clinical isolates, characterize its chemical nature, and assess its biological activity against different bacteria and cancer cells. Due to its diverse bioactive properties, pyocyanin, being one of the virulence factors of P. aeruginosa, holds a promising, safe, and available therapeutic potential.

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Metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD), formerly known as non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), is a frequent clinical condition globally. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with NAFLD have been proposed in the literature and based on bioinformatic screening. The association between NAFLD and genetic variants in Egyptians is still unclear.

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Aims: Prostate cancer is among the highest incidence malignancies in men with a prevalence rate increasing in parallel to the rising global trends in metabolic disorders. Whereas a sizeable body of evidence links metabolic impairment to negative prognosis of prostate cancer, the molecular mechanism underlying this connection has not been thoroughly examined. Our previous work showed that localized adipose tissue inflammation occurring in select adipose depots in early metabolic derangement instigated significant molecular, structural, and functional alterations in neighboring tissues underlying the complications observed at this stage.

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  • KRAS mutations require new treatment strategies since KRAS itself is hard to target; thus, researchers focus on inhibiting the downstream PI3K/AKT/mTOR pathway, which affects cancer cell growth and survival.
  • However, blocking this pathway can trigger autophagy, which diminishes the effectiveness of treatments, leading to the idea that combining kinase inhibitors with autophagy inhibitors might improve outcomes.
  • In experiments with breast and lung cancer cells, a combination of the drugs Dactolisib and Lys05 showed enhanced effects on cell death and proliferation compared to using either drug alone, especially in lung cancer cells (A549).
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Purpose: Although there is an established role for microbiome dysbiosis in the pathobiology of colorectal cancer (CRC), CRC patients of various race/ethnicities demonstrate distinct clinical behaviors. Thus, we investigated microbiome dysbiosis in Egyptian, African American (AA), and European American (EA) CRC patients.

Patients And Methods: CRCs and their corresponding normal tissues from Egyptian (n = 17) patients of the Alexandria University Hospital, Egypt, and tissues from AA (n = 18) and EA (n = 19) patients at the University of Alabama at Birmingham were collected.

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A carbon dots (CDs)-biolabeled heat-inactivated (HILP) hybrid was investigated as a multifunctional probiotic drug carrier with bioimaging properties using prodigiosin (PG) as anticancer agent. HILP, CDs and PG were prepared and characterized using standard methods. CDs-labeled HILP (CDs/HILP) and PG loaded CDs/HILP were characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), laser scanning confocal microscopy (LSCM) and for entrapment efficiency (EE%) of CDs and PG, respectively.

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Bioactive hybrid constructs are at the cutting edge of innovative biomaterials. PLA nanofibrous microspheres (NF-MS) were functionalized with zinc oxide nanoparticles (nZnO) and DDAB-modified nZnO (D-nZnO) for developing inorganic/nano-microparticulate hybrid constructs (nZnO@NF-MS and D-nZnO@NF-MS) merging antibacterial, regenerative, and haemostatic functionalities. The hybrids appeared as three-dimensional NF-MS frameworks made-up entirely of interconnecting nanofibers embedding nZnO or D-nZnO.

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Liver Fibrosis can be life-threatening if left untreated as it may lead to serious, incurable complications. The common therapeutic approach is to reverse the fibrosis while the intervention is still applicable. Celecoxib was shown to exhibit some antifibrotic properties in the induced fibrotic liver in rats.

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Background: Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the fifth most diagnosed cancer in Sub-Saharan Africa. In Kenya, CRC incidence rates tripled from 1997 to 2017. In the Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital, Moi University, there has been an increase in CRC cases, notably for younger patients.

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Methyl paraben (MP) is an endocrine-disrupting compound that possesses estrogenic properties and contributes to an aberrant burden of estrogen signaling in the human breast and subsequently increasing the risks for the development of breast cancer. The exact exposure, as well as the safe concentrations, are variable among daily products. The present study addresses the effects of exposure to escalated concentrations of MP on the proliferation of MCF-7 breast cancer cells in addition to exploring its other mechanisms of action.

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  • Microbial L-asparaginases break down L-asparagine into L-aspartate and are important for treating certain cancers and in the food industry.
  • The study cloned a specific enzyme (DcL-ASNase) into an expression vector, allowing for purification and analysis of its activity at different temperatures.
  • The enzyme was found to induce apoptosis in cancer cells without harming peripheral blood monocytes, with gene expression studies revealing more about the underlying mechanisms.
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  • The study focuses on the large-scale production and purification of l-asparaginase (l-ASNase) from Pseudomonas aeruginosa, highlighting its expression in E. coli and purification using a nickel-affinity method.
  • The purified enzyme showed enhanced stability with certain osmolytes and demonstrated significant cytotoxic effects against various cancer cell lines, including triple-negative breast cancer and leukemia.
  • The findings indicate that l-ASNase induces apoptosis in cancer cells, with distinct rates of early and late apoptosis observed in treated THP-1 cells.
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  • Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) lacks key biomarkers, making it harder to treat compared to other breast cancer types, leading to reliance on conventional chemotherapy, which often results in drug resistance.
  • A study focused on the effects of the combination of PU-H71 and DHEA on TNBC cells (MDA-MB-231) using the Chou-Talalay method to evaluate their synergistic impact.
  • The combined treatment increased oxidative stress, controlled antioxidant expression, and ultimately induced apoptotic cell death, demonstrating a strong anti-tumor effect.
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In the pursuit of new compounds for co-treatment to enhance the anticancer efficacy of cisplatin against lung adenocarcinoma, a series of chalcone-tethered 1,3,5-triazines was designed and synthesized. MTT assay was used to evaluate the anticancer activity of the combinations in which two hybrids 10 and 12 were found to significantly inhibit A549 cancer cells viability and their IC values were 24.5 and 17 µM, respectively in reference to cisplatin (IC = 21.

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Although NF-κB is known to play a pivotal role in lung cancer, contributing to tumor growth, microenvironmental changes, and metastasis, the epigenetic regulation of NF-κB in tumor context is largely unknown. Here we report that the IKK2/NF-κB signaling pathway modulates metastasis-associated protein 2 (MTA2), a component of the nucleosome remodeling and deacetylase complex (NuRD). In triple transgenic mice, downregulation of IKK2 (Sftpc-cRaf-IKK2DN) in cRaf-induced tumors in alveolar epithelial type II cells restricted tumor formation, whereas activation of IKK2 (Sftpc-cRaf-IKK2CA) supported tumor growth; both effects were accompanied by altered expression of MTA2.

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Dyspnea is a frequent, devastating, and poorly understood symptom of advanced lung cancer. In our cohort, among 519 patients who underwent a computed tomography scan for the diagnosis of lung cancer, 250 had a mean pulmonary artery diameter of >28 mm, indicating pulmonary hypertension (PH). In human lung cancer tissue, we consistently observed increased vascular remodeling and perivascular inflammatory cell accumulation (macrophages/lymphocytes).

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Acquiring therapy resistance is one of the major obstacles in the treatment of patients with cancer. The discovery of the cancer stem cell (CSC)-specific drug salinomycin raised hope for improved treatment options by targeting therapy-refractory CSCs and mesenchymal cancer cells. However, the occurrence of an acquired salinomycin resistance in tumor cells remains elusive.

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Epigenetic silencing through promoter hypermethylation is an important hallmark for the inactivation of tumor-related genes in carcinogenesis. Here we identified the ATP-binding cassette sub-family B member 4 (ABCB4) as a novel epigenetically silenced target gene. We investigated the epigenetic regulation of ABCB4 in 26 human lung, breast, skin, liver, head and neck cancer cells lines and in primary cancers by methylation and expression analysis.

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Tumors are often greatly dependent on signaling cascades promoting cell growth or survival and may become hypersensitive to inactivation of key components within these signaling pathways. Ras and RAF mutations found in human cancer confer constitutive activity to these signaling molecules thereby converting them into an oncogenic state. RAF dimerization is required for normal Ras-dependent RAF activation and is required for the oncogenic potential of mutant RAFs.

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Article Synopsis
  • Cancer stem cells (CSCs) play a crucial role in the initiation and recurrence of lung tumors, and targeting them with specific drugs could help control cancer growth and spread.
  • Salinomycin was found to significantly reduce the population of ALDH+ CSCs and the ability of LLC cells to form tumorspheres, while paclitaxel increased the proportion of these CSCs and reduced primary tumor volume but led to more metastatic growth.
  • In vivo studies showed that salinomycin effectively decreased lung metastasis without affecting primary tumors, whereas paclitaxel's side effects included promoting CSC selection, highlighting the need for careful drug choice in cancer treatment.
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Although progenitor cells of the conducting airway have been spatially localized and some insights have been gained regarding their molecular phenotype, relatively little is known about the mechanisms regulating their maintenance, activation, and differentiation. This study investigates the potential roles of E-cadherin in mouse Clara cells, as these cells were shown to represent the progenitor/stem cells of the conducting airways and have been implicated as the cell of origin of human non-small cell lung cancer. Postnatal inactivation of E-cadherin affected Clara cell differentiation and compromised airway regeneration under injury conditions.

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