Epigenetic and post-translational modifications in autophagy: biological functions and therapeutic targets.

Autophagy is a conserved lysosomal degradation pathway where cellular components are dynamically degraded and re-processed to maintain physical homeostasis. However, the physiological effect of autophagy appears to be multifaced. On the one hand, autophagy functions as a cytoprotective mechanism, protecting against multiple diseases, especially tumor, cardiovascular disorders, and neurodegenerative and infectious disease.

Tumor-suppressive microRNA-449a induces growth arrest and senescence by targeting E2F3 in human lung cancer cells.

MicroRNA-449a (miR-449a) was significantly downregulated in 156 lung cancer tissues (p<0.001). We found that the low expression of miR-449a was highly correlated with cancer recurrence and survival of lung cancer patients.

[Methods of BMP immobilization and evaluation for Ti-based dental implant surface modification].

Ti-based biomaterial has been widely used as dental and bone implant material although its bioactivity still needs improvement especially for dental implant. The bone morphogenetic proteins(BMPs) bound to Ti-based materials will attract the mesenchymal stem cells to differentiate into osteoblast cells, which benefits the response to the protein-material surface, and finally leads to new bone formation. Several methods including physically mixing, coating, plasma immobilization and cross-linking were used to investigate how BMPs bind to Ti-based biomaterials.