The transcriptomic analytical level determines the human monocyte-derived macrophage response toward either the infectious agent or the host.

Unlabelled: Macrophages exhibit multifunctional activity and play a central role in the response to infectious agents. It is commonly accepted that the plasticity of the response of macrophages depends on the type of stimuli. Here we re-evaluate whether the macrophage response is only dependent on the stimulus.

Targeting multiplicity: the key factor for anti-cancer nanoparticles.

In this mini-review, we focus on different strategies to bring nanotools specifically to cancer cells. We discuss about a better targeting of tumor, combining the characteristics of tumor environment, the increase in nanoparticles life time, the biomarkers overexpressed on cancer cells and different physical methods for non invasive therapies. Here we detail the necessity of a synergy between passive and active targeting for an actual specificity of cancer cells.

Estrogens promote cell-cell adhesion of normal and malignant mammary cells through increased desmosome formation.

The association of estrogen receptor alpha (ERα) expression with differentiated breast tumors presenting a lower metastasis risk could be explained by the estrogen modulation of cell adhesion, motility and invasiveness. Since desmosomes play a crucial role in cell-cell adhesion and may interfere in tumor progression, we studied their regulation by estrogens in human breast cancer and normal mammary cells. Estrogens increased the formation of desmosomes in normal and malignant cells.

Intertwining threshold settings, biological data and database knowledge to optimize the selection of differentially expressed genes from microarray.

Background: Many tools used to analyze microarrays in different conditions have been described. However, the integration of deregulated genes within coherent metabolic pathways is lacking. Currently no objective selection criterion based on biological functions exists to determine a threshold demonstrating that a gene is indeed differentially expressed.