Publications by authors named "Zhi-Rong Qian"

Background: This research seeks to formulate a prognostic model for forecasting prostate cancer recurrence by examining the interaction between mitochondrial function and programmed cell death (PCD).

Methods: The research involved analyzing four gene expression datasets from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) using univariate Cox regression. These analyses identified genes linked with mitochondrial function and PCD that correlate with recurrence prognosis.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM) is a leading cause of heart failure. Cuproptosis is involved in various diseases, although its role in DCM is still unclear. Here, this study aims to investigate the feasibility of using genes related to cuproptosis as diagnostic biomarkers for DCM and the association of their expression with immune infiltration and drug target in cardiac tissue.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The therapeutic efficacy of umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells (UCMSCs) in acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is mainly limited by the efficiency of homing of UCMSCs toward tissue damage. C-X-C chemokine receptor type 7 (CXCR7), which is involved in the mobilization of UCMSCs, is only expressed on the surface of a small proportion of UCMSCs. This study examined whether overexpression of CXCR7 in UCMSCs (UCMSCs) could improve their homing efficiency, and therefore, improve their effectiveness in fibrosis repair at the site of lung injury caused by ARDS.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Intratumoral hypoxia is widely associated with the development of malignancy, treatment resistance, and worse prognoses. The global influence of hypoxia-related genes (HRGs) on prognostic significance, tumor microenvironment characteristics, and therapeutic response is unclear in patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). RNA-seq and clinical data for NSCLC patients were derived from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) database, and a group of HRGs was obtained from the MSigDB.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

There is growing evidence that long-term central nervous system (CNS) inflammation exacerbates secondary deterioration of brain structures and functions and is one of the major determinants of disease outcome and progression. In acute CNS injury, brain microglia are among the first cells to respond and play a critical role in neural repair and regeneration. However, microglial activation can also impede CNS repair and amplify tissue damage, and phenotypic transformation may be responsible for this dual role.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Ovarian cancer is a common gynecologic malignancy with a high fatality rate. Intraperitoneal chemotherapy has been proved as an efficient clinical treatment for disseminated ovarian cancer. However, there are limitations for conventional small molecule drugs to achieve an ideal therapeutic effect.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Ovarian cancer is the most lethal gynecological cancer which is characterized by extensive peritoneal implantation metastasis and malignant ascites. Despite advances in diagnosis and treatment in recent years, the five-year survival rate is only 25-30%. Therefore, developing multifunctional nanomedicine with abilities of promoting apoptosis and inhibiting migration on tumor cells would be a promising strategy to improve the antitumor effect.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) develops rapidly and has a high mortality rate. Survivors usually have low quality of life. Current clinical management strategies are respiratory support and restricted fluid input, and there is no suggested pharmacological treatment.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a common malignant tumor that affects people worldwide. Metagenomic analyses have shown an enrichment of () in colorectal carcinoma tissue; many studies have indicated that is closely related to the colorectal carcinogenesis. In this review, we provide the latest information to reveal the related molecular mechanisms.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Current cancer therapies have encountered adverse response due to poor therapeutic efficiency, severe side effects and acquired resistance to multiple drugs. Thus, there are urgent needs for finding new cancer-targeted pharmacological strategies. In this review, we summarized the current understanding with THZ1, a covalent inhibitor of cyclin-dependent kinase 7 (CDK7), which demonstrated promising anti-tumor activity against different cancer types.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Fusobacterium nucleatum (F. nucleatum), which has been associated with colorectal carcinogenesis, can impair anti-tumour immunity, and actively invade colon epithelial cells. Considering the critical role of autophagy in host defence against microorganisms, we hypothesised that autophagic activity of tumour cells might influence the amount of F.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

BACKGROUND Baicalin, one of the main bioactive components extracted from the traditional Chinese medicine baical Skullcap root, has an anti-tumor activity which had been studied in several cancers. However, its role in human mesothelioma remains unknown. In this study, we investigated the anti-tumor mechanisms of baicalin in the mesothelioma cell line MESO924.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: The high expression across multiple tumor types and restricted expression in normal tissues make B7-H3 an attractive target for immunotherapy. So far, little is known about the clinical significance of B7-H3 expression in meningiomas. We conducted this study to address this issue in a cohort of 242 patients from a single institution.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: A preventive potential of high calcium intake against colorectal cancer has been indicated for distal colon cancer, which is inversely associated with high-level CpG island methylator phenotype (CIMP), high-level microsatellite instability (MSI), and BRAF and PIK3CA mutations. In addition, BRAF mutation is strongly inversely correlated with KRAS mutation. We hypothesized that the association between calcium intake and colon cancer risk might vary by these molecular features.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Calcium intake has been associated with a lower risk of colorectal cancer. Calcium signaling may enhance T-cell proliferation and differentiation, and contribute to T-cell-mediated antitumor immunity. In this prospective cohort study, we investigated the association between calcium intake and colorectal cancer risk according to tumor immunity status to provide additional insights into the role of calcium in colorectal carcinogenesis.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

BACKGROUND Alteration of DNA methylation of tumor suppressor genes (TSGs) is one of the most consistent epigenetic changes in human cancers. DNMTs play several important roles in DNA methylation and development of cancers. Regarding DNMTs protein expressions, little is known about the clinical significance and correlation with promoter methylation status of TSGs in human pituitary adenomas.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Purpose: Germline variants in double-strand DNA damage repair (dsDDR) genes (e.g., BRCA1/2) predispose to pancreatic adenocarcinoma (PDAC) and may predict sensitivity to platinum-based chemotherapy and poly(ADP) ribose polymerase (PARP) inhibitors.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background & Aims: Specific nutritional components are likely to induce intestinal inflammation, which is characterized by increased levels of interleukin 6 (IL6), C-reactive protein (CRP), and tumor necrosis factor-receptor superfamily member 1B (TNFRSF1B) in the circulation and promotes colorectal carcinogenesis. The inflammatory effects of a diet can be estimated based on an empiric dietary inflammatory pattern (EDIP) score, calculated based on intake of 18 foods associated with plasma levels of IL6, CRP, and TNFRSF1B. An inflammatory environment in the colon (based on increased levels of IL6, CRP, and TNFRSF1B in peripheral blood) contributes to impairment of the mucosal barrier and altered immune cell responses, affecting the composition of the intestinal microbiota.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

To understand the genetic drivers of immune recognition and evasion in colorectal cancer, we analyzed 1,211 colorectal cancer primary tumor samples, including 179 classified as microsatellite instability-high (MSI-high). This set includes The Cancer Genome Atlas colorectal cancer cohort of 592 samples, completed and analyzed here. MSI-high, a hypermutated, immunogenic subtype of colorectal cancer, had a high rate of significantly mutated genes in important immune-modulating pathways and in the antigen presentation machinery, including biallelic losses of and genes due to copy-number alterations and copy-neutral loss of heterozygosity.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background & Aims: Statin medications, most commonly prescribed to reduce lipid levels and prevent cardiovascular disease, may be associated with longer survival times of patients with cancer. However, the association of statins with outcomes of patients with pancreatic adenocarcinoma is not clear.

Methods: We analyzed the association of statin use before a diagnosis of pancreatic cancer with survival times of 648 participants in the Nurses' Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-up Study who were diagnosed with pancreatic adenocarcinoma from 2000 through 2013.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Statins, 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl-coenzyme A (HMG-CoA) reductase inhibitors, are common lipid-lowering agents and may reduce the risk of several cancer types including pancreatic cancer. However, the association between statin use and pancreatic cancer risk has not been fully evaluated in prospective studies.

Methods: We studied the association between statin use and incident pancreatic cancer in 113,059 participants from the prospective Nurses' Health Study and Health Professionals Follow-up Study.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Evidence suggests that nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drug aspirin (acetylsalicylic acid) may improve patient survival in -mutant colorectal carcinoma, but not in -wild-type carcinoma. However, whether aspirin directly influences the viability of -mutant colon cancer cells is poorly understood. We conducted experiments to test our hypothesis that the anti-proliferative activity of aspirin might be stronger for -mutant colon cancer cells than for -wild-type colon cancer cells.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Importance: Although patients with resected pancreatic adenocarcinoma are at high risk for disease recurrence, few biomarkers are available to inform patient outcomes.

Objective: To evaluate the alterations of the 4 main driver genes in pancreatic adenocarcinoma and patient outcomes after cancer resection.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This study analyzed protein expression and DNA alterations for the KRAS, CDKN2A, SMAD4, and TP53 genes by immunohistochemistry and next-generation sequencing in formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tumors in 356 patients with resected pancreatic adenocarcinoma who were treated at the Dana-Farber/Brigham and Women's Cancer Center (October 26, 2002, to May 21, 2012), University of Rochester Medical Center (March 1, 2006, to November 1, 2013), or Stanford Cancer Institute (September 26, 1995, to May 22, 2013).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Expression of the immune checkpoint ligand CD274 (programmed cell death 1 ligand 1, PD-L1, from gene ) contributes to suppression of antitumor T cell-mediated immune response in various tumor types. However, the role of PDCD1LG2 (PD-L2, CD273, from gene ) in the tumor microenvironment remains unclear. We hypothesized that tumor PDCD1LG2 expression might be inversely associated with lymphocytic reactions to colorectal cancer.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Objectives: Dysregulation of the cell cycle has been observed and implicated as an etiologic factor in a range of human malignancies, but remains relatively unstudied in neuroendocrine tumors (NETs). We evaluated expression of key proteins involved in cell cycle regulation in a large cohort of NETs.

Methods: We evaluated immunohistochemical expression of CDKN1B, CDKN1A, CDKN2A, CDK2, CDK4, CDK6, cyclin D1, cyclin E1, and phosphorylated retinoblastoma protein (phospho-RB1) in a cohort of 267 patients with NETs.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF