Publications by authors named "Raquel Montenegro"

Gastric cancer (GC) is a common cancer worldwide. Therefore, searching for effective treatments is essential, and drug repositioning can be a promising strategy to find new potential drugs for GC therapy. For the first time, we sought to identify molecular alterations and validate new mechanisms related to Mebendazole (MBZ) treatment in GC cells through transcriptome analysis using microarray technology.

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  • SARS-CoV-2 infection severity may be influenced by genetic factors, particularly through the role of platelets and coagulation markers in severe COVID-19 cases.
  • A study of 43 unvaccinated hospitalized COVID-19 patients found significantly higher expression of the platelet-activating factor receptor (PTAFR) and platelet factor 4 (PF4) compared to healthy individuals.
  • The findings suggest that hyperexpression of these genes could serve as important biomarkers for assessing the risk of complications in COVID-19 patients, aiding in personalized treatment approaches.
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Cancer resistance to drugs and chemotherapy is a problem faced by public health systems worldwide. Repositioning antimicrobial peptides could be an efficient strategy to overcome that problem. This study aimed at repurposing antimicrobial peptides PepGAT and PepKAA for cancer treatment.

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Gastric cancer (GC) is a leading cause of cancer-related deaths globally. It is a multifactorial, molecularly heterogeneous disease whose carcinogenic patterns are not yet well established, requiring the development of new tools for better understanding and identifying gastric carcinogenesis. From this point of view, this study aims to compare transcriptome profiles from The Cancer Genome Atlas Stomach Adenocarcinoma (TCGA-STAD) and a human-merged dataset to identify potential biomarkers and therapeutic targets.

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Synthetic antimicrobial peptides (SAMPs) present the potential to fight systemic fungal infections. Here, the PHO36 receptor from was analyzed by tools as a possible target for three anticandidal SAMPs: Alb-PepIII, PepGAT and PepKAA. Molecular docking, dynamics and quantum biochemistry were employed to understand the individual contribution of amino acid residues in the interaction region.

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Background:  Olfactory dysfunction (OD) represents a frequent manifestation of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19). Apolipoprotein E (APOE) is a protein that interacts with the angiotensin-converting enzyme receptor, essential for viral entry into the cell. Previous publications have suggested a possible role of APOE in COVID-19 severity.

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Melanoma is a type of tumor skin with high metastatic potential. Reconstructed human skin, development for pre-clinic assay, are make using primary human cells, but with same limitations. The aim this study was to characterize a cell culture model, with structure similar to human skin containing melanoma cells entirely from cell lines.

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Gastric adenocarcinoma is a complex disease with diverse genetic modifications, including Anaplastic Lymphoma Kinase (ALK) gene changes. The ALK gene is located on chromosome 2p23 and encodes a receptor tyrosine kinase that plays a crucial role in embryonic development and cellular differentiation. ALK alterations can result from gene fusion, mutation, amplification, or overexpression in gastric adenocarcinoma.

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  • A recent study explored the relationship between ε4 gene polymorphism, cognitive deficits, and COVID-19 in outpatient patients experiencing neurological symptoms for over three months post-infection.
  • The research included 219 confirmed COVID-19 patients, finding that a significant portion reported memory issues, though only a small percentage had these concerns verified through cognitive screening tests.
  • Results indicated a higher prevalence of the ε4 allele in patients with cognitive decline compared to those without, and the association remained strong even after considering sleep disorders and anxiety symptoms.
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Resistance to antimicrobial drugs has been considered a public health problem. Likewise, the increasing resistance of cancer cells to drugs currently used in therapy has also become a problem. Therefore, the research and development of synthetic peptides bring a new perspective on the emergence of new drugs for treating this resistance since bioinformatics provides a means to optimize these molecules and save time and costs in research.

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Detection of t(9;22), and consequent fusion, is still a marker of worse prognosis for acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), with resistance to tyrosine-kinase inhibitor therapy being a major obstacle in the clinical practice for this subset of patients. In this study, we investigated the effectiveness of targeting poly-ADP-ribose polymerase (PARP) in a model of p190+ ALL, the most common isoform to afflict ALL patients, and demonstrated the use of experimental PARP inhibitor (PARPi), AZD2461, as a therapeutic option with cytotoxic capabilities similar to that of imatinib, the current gold standard in medical care. We characterized cytostatic profiles, induced cell death, and biomarker expression modulation utilizing cell models, also providing a comprehensive genome-wide analysis through an aCGH of the model used, and further validated PARP1 differential expression in samples of ALL p190+ patients from local healthcare institutions, as well as in larger cohorts of online and readily available datasets.

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Cancer is indisputably one of the leading causes of death worldwide. Snake venoms are a potential source of bioactive compounds, complex mixtures constituted mainly of proteins and peptides with several pharmacological possibilities, including the potential to inhibit tumoral cell growth. In the present study, it was evaluated the antitumor effect of crude venom of Bothrops erythromelas (BeV), Bothrops jararaca (from Southern and Southeastern- BjsV and BjsdV, respectively) and Bothrops alternatus (BaV) in in vitro Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) cancer cell line model.

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Background & Aims: Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) infection causes changes that can influence human metabolism and modify the distribution of body compartments. We aimed to describe the clinical findings of changes in resting metabolism, muscle strength, and body composition in nonhospitalized patients after being diagnosed with coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19).

Methods: Physically active patients were evaluated at a nutrition clinic, and indirect calorimetry (IC) and body composition analysis using portable ultrasound were performed.

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forms biofilms, a structure that protects bacterial cells, conferring more resistance to difficult treatment. Synthetic peptides surge as an alternative to overcome the biofilm of multidrug-resistant pathogens. -CBP-PepI, when combined with Ciprofloxacin, reduced preformed biofilm by 50% at low concentrations (0.

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Gastric cancer (GC) is a highly heterogeneous, complex disease and the fifth most common cancer worldwide (about 1 million cases and 784,000 deaths worldwide in 2018). GC has a poor prognosis (the 5-year survival rate is less than 20%), but there is an effort to find genes highly expressed during tumor establishment and use the related proteins as targets to find new anticancer molecules. Data were collected from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) bank to obtain three dataset matrices analyzing gastric tumor tissue versus normal gastric tissue and involving microarray analysis performed using the GPL570 platform and different sources.

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Gastric cancer (GC) is among the most-diagnosed and deadly malignancies worldwide. Deregulation in cellular bioenergetics is a hallmark of cancer. Based on the importance of metabolic reprogramming for the development and cancer progression, inhibitors of cell metabolism have been studied as potential candidates for chemotherapy in oncology.

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This study aimed to analyze the phylogenetic relationships between the ACE2 of humans and other animals and investigate the potential interaction between SARS-CoV-2 RBD and ACE2 of different species. The phylogenetic construction and molecular interactions were assessed using computational models. Despite the evolutionary distance, 11 species had a perfect fit for the interaction between their ACE2 and SARS-CoV-2 RBD (, , , ).

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Background: Among the food additives used in the food industry, food dyes are considered the most toxic. For instance, tartrazine (TRZ) is a food colorant commercially available with conflicting data regarding its cytotoxic, genotoxic, and mutagenic effects. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the cytotoxic and mutagenic potential of TRZ using different eukaryotic cells (in vitro).

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Unlabelled: The current outbreak of COVID-19 cases worldwide has been responsible for a significant number of deaths, especially in hospitalized patients suffering from comorbidities, such as obesity, diabetes, hypertension. The disease not only has prompted an interest in the pathophysiology, but also it has propelled a massive race to find new anti-SARS-CoV-2 drugs. In this scenario, known drugs commonly used to treat other diseases have been suggested as alternative or complementary therapeutics.

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Colorectal cancer (CRC) is estimated as the third most incident cancer and second in mortality worldwide. Moreover, CRC metastasis reduces patients' survival rates. Thus, the study and identification of new compounds with anticancer activity selectively to tumor cells are encouraged in the CRC treatment.

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Despite advances in cancer chemotherapy, gastric cancer (GC) continues to have high recurrence rates and poor prognosis with limited treatment options. Understanding the etiology of GC and developing more effective, less harmful therapeutic approaches are vital and urgent. Therefore, this work describes a novel kinase target in malignant gastric cells as a potential therapeutic strategy.

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Chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) is caused by constitutively active fusion protein BCR-ABL1, and targeting ABL1 is a promising therapy option. Imatinib, dasatinib, and nilotinib have all been shown to work effectively in clinical trials. ABL1 mutations, particularly the T315I gate-keeper mutation, cause resistance in patients.

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Article Synopsis
  • Ceará was the second most affected state in Brazil by COVID-19 in terms of cases and deaths, but its early pandemic dynamics were not well understood due to low genomic surveillance.
  • The study sequenced 34 genomes of SARS-CoV-2 and identified prevalent lineages, notably B.1.1.33 in 2020 and P.1 in 2021, along with other variants.
  • A total of 202 mutations were analyzed, revealing significant missense mutations that could help enhance the understanding of virus genetic diversity in Ceará despite limited data in 2020.
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Introduction: Few studies have objectively evaluated cognitive deficits after the acute phase of COVID-19 disease. Moreover, the role of apolipoprotein E (APOE) genotypes in cognitive decline in patients with COVID-19 has not been evaluated yet.

Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted in confirmed cases of COVID-19 patients with neurological symptoms that persisted for more than 3 months from the onset.

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The multidrug resistance (MDR) phenotype is one of the major obstacles in the treatment of chronic myeloid leukemia (CML) in advantage stages such as blast crisis. In this scenario, more patients develop resistance mechanisms during the course of the disease, making tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKIs) target therapies ineffective. Therefore, the aim of the study was to examine the pharmacological role of CNN1, a para-naphthoquinone, in a leukemia multidrug resistant cell line.

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