Publications by authors named "Zizheng Gao"

Crizotinib, a small-molecule tyrosine kinase inhibitor targeting ALK, MET and ROS1, is the first-line drug for ALK-positive metastatic non-small cell lung cancer and is associated with severe, sometimes fatal, cases of cardiac failure, which increases the risk of mortality. However, the underlying mechanism remains unclear, which causes the lack of therapeutic strategy. We established in vitro and in vivo models for crizotinib-induced cardiotoxicity and found that crizotinib caused left ventricular dysfunction, myocardial injury and pathological remodeling in mice and induced cardiomyocyte apoptosis and mitochondrial injury.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • - The paper examines deer antlers as a model to understand rapid growth and cartilage formation in mammals, highlighting the under-explored roles of specific genes and regulatory mechanisms.
  • - Using a technique called fluorescence-labeled methylation-sensitive amplified polymorphism (F-MSAP), the study found that DNA methylation levels in reserve mesenchyme cells were significantly lower than in cartilage cells, indicating that DNA demethylation may drive fast cartilage differentiation.
  • - The research identified 20 unique methylated fragments linked to either reserve mesenchyme or cartilage, providing the first concrete evidence connecting epigenetic regulation to the rapid cartilage development occurring in antlers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Crizotinib is the first-line drug for advanced non-small cell lung cancer with the abnormal expression of anaplastic lymphoma kinase gene. Severe, life-threatening, or fatal interstitial lung disease/pneumonia has been reported in patients treated with crizotinib. The clinical benefit of crizotinib is limited by its pulmonary toxicity, but the underlying mechanisms have not been adequately studied, and protective strategies are relatively scarce.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Aims: Trastuzumab, the first humanized monoclonal antibody that targets human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (ERBB2/HER2), is currently used as a first-line treatment for HER2 (+) tumours. However, trastuzumab increases the risk of cardiac complications without affecting myocardial structure, suggesting a distinct mechanism of cardiotoxicity.

Methods And Results: We used medium from trastuzumab-treated human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) to treat CCC-HEH-2 cells, the human embryonic cardiac tissue-derived cell lines, and human induced pluripotent stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes (iPSC-CMs) to assess the crosstalk between vascular endothelial cells (VECs) and cardiomyocytes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is characterized by noncardiogenic pulmonary edema. It has a high mortality rate and lacks effective pharmacotherapy. With the outbreak of COVID-19 worldwide, the mortality of ARDS has increased correspondingly, which makes it urgent to find effective targets and strategies for the treatment of ARDS.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Dasatinib, a second-generation BCR-ABL inhibitor, is currently used as first-line treatment for patients with chronic myeloid leukemia. However, dasatinib treatment increases the risk of severe cutaneous toxicity, which limits its long-term safe use in clinic. The underlying mechanism for dasatinib-induced cutaneous toxicity has not been clarified.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

High incidence of cutaneous toxicity ranging from 29.2% to 71.2% has been reported during clinical use of vandetanib, which is a multi-target kinase inhibitor indicated for the treatment of unresectable medullary thyroid carcinoma.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Excessive macroautophagy/autophagy is one of the causes of cardiomyocyte death induced by cardiovascular diseases or cancer therapy, yet the underlying mechanism remains unknown. We and other groups previously reported that autophagy might contribute to cardiomyocyte death caused by sunitinib, a tumor angiogenesis inhibitor that is widely used in clinic, which may help to understand the mechanism of autophagy-induced cardiomyocyte death. Here, we found that sunitinib-induced autophagy leads to apoptosis of cardiomyocyte and cardiac dysfunction as the cardiomyocyte-specific heterozygous mice are resistant to sunitinib.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Rash is one of the primary dose-limiting toxicities of Akt (protein kinase B) inhibitors in clinical trials. Here, we demonstrate the inhibition of Akt2 isozyme may be a driver for keratinocyte apoptosis, which promotes us to search for new selective Akt inhibitors with an improved cutaneous safety property. According to our previous research, compound is selected for further optimization for overcoming the disadvantages of compound , including high Akt2 inhibition and high toxicity against HaCaT keratinocytes.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Dasatinib shows remarkable activity against imatinib-refractory chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) and Philadelphia chromosome positive acute lymphoblastic leukemia (PhALL). However, severe cardiovascular toxicity limits the clinical applications of dasatinib. Since the underlying mechanism of dasatinib-induced cardiotoxicity is still elusive, we aim to clarify this.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF