Background: Rectal cancer (RC) is one of the most commonly diagnosed and particularly challenging tumours to treat due to its location in the pelvis and close proximity to critical genitourinary organs. Radiotherapy (RT) is recognised as a key component of therapeutic strategy to treat RC, promoting the downsizing and downstaging of large RCs in neoadjuvant settings, although its therapeutic effect is limited due to radioresistance. Evidence from experimental and clinical studies indicates that the likelihood of achieving local tumour control by RT depends on the complete eradication of cancer stem cells (CSC), a minority subset of tumour cells with stemness properties.
Methods: A systematic literature review was conducted by querying two scientific databases (Pubmed and Scopus). The search was restricted to papers published from 2009 to 2021.
Results: After assessing the quality and the risk of bias, a total of 11 studies were selected as they mainly focused on biomarkers predictive of RT-response in CSCs isolated from patients affected by RC. Specifically these studies showed that elevated levels of CD133, CD44, ALDH1, Lgr5 and G9a are associated with RT-resistance and poor prognosis.
Conclusions: This review aimed to provide an overview of the current scenario of in vitro and in vivo studies evaluating the biomarkers predictive of RT-response in CSCs derived from RC patients.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/genes12101502 | DOI Listing |
Discov Oncol
January 2025
Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery, Nanfang Hospital, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, 510515, China.
The zinc finger protein 32 (ZNF32) has been associated with high expression in various cancers, underscoring its significant function in both cancer biology and immune response. To further elucidate the biological role of ZNF32 and identify potential immunotherapy targets in cancer, we conducted an in-depth analysis of ZNF32. We comprehensively investigated the expression of ZNF32 across tumors using diverse databases, including TCGA, CCLE, TIMER2.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEMBO Mol Med
January 2025
Department of Environmental Health, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, 02115, USA.
The exposome is the measure of all the exposures of an individual in a lifetime and how those exposures relate to health. Exposomics is the emerging field of research to measure and study the totality of the exposome. Exposomics can assist with molecular medicine by furthering our understanding of how the exposome influences cellular and molecular processes such as gene expression, epigenetic modifications, metabolic pathways, and immune responses.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNat Med
January 2025
Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel.
Sleep tests commonly diagnose sleep disorders, but the diverse sleep-related biomarkers recorded by such tests can also provide broader health insights. In this study, we leveraged the uniquely comprehensive data from the Human Phenotype Project cohort, which includes 448 sleep characteristics collected from 16,812 nights of home sleep apnea test monitoring in 6,366 adults (3,043 male and 3,323 female participants), to study associations between sleep traits and body characteristics across 16 body systems. In this analysis, which identified thousands of significant associations, visceral adipose tissue (VAT) was the body characteristic that was most strongly correlated with the peripheral apnea-hypopnea index, as adjusted by sex, age and body mass index (BMI).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSci Rep
January 2025
BioResource Research Center, RIKEN, 3-1-1, Koyadai, Tsukuba, 305-0074, Ibaraki, Japan.
Omics data provide a plethora of quantifiable information that can potentially be used to identify biomarkers targeting the physiological processes and ecological phenomena of organisms. However, omics data have not been fully utilized because current prediction methods in biomarker construction are susceptible to data multidimensionality and noise. We developed OmicSense, a quantitative prediction method that uses a mixture of Gaussian distributions as the probability distribution, yielding the most likely objective variable predicted for each biomarker.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Immunother Cancer
January 2025
Department of Oncology, Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Taipei, Taiwan
Background: Cholangiocarcinoma is a challenging malignancy with limited responses to conventional therapies, particularly immune checkpoint inhibitor therapy. Tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) and tertiary lymphoid structures (TLSs) are key components of the tumor microenvironment (TME) and have been implicated in the immune response to cancer. However, the role and difference of TLSs and TILs in patients with cholangiocarcinoma remains unclear.
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