Years before insulin was discovered, anti-inflammatory sodium salicylate was used to treat diabetes in 1901. Intriguingly for many years that followed, diabetes was viewed as a disorder of glucose metabolism, and then it was described as a disease of dysregulated lipid metabolism. The diabetes research focused on the causal relationship between obesity and insulin resistance, a major characteristic of type 2 diabetes. It is only within the past 20 years when the notion of inflammation as a cause of insulin resistance began to surface. In obesity, inflammation develops when macrophages infiltrate adipose tissue and stimulate adipocyte secretion of inflammatory cytokines, that in turn affect energy balance, glucose and lipid metabolism, leading to insulin resistance. This report reviews recent discoveries of stress kinase signaling involving molecular scaffolds and endoplasmic reticulum chaperones that regulate energy balance and glucose homeostasis. As we advance from a conceptual understanding to molecular discoveries, a century-old story of inflammation and insulin resistance is re-born with new ideas.
Adipocytes ; Adipose Tissue ; Cytokines ; Endoplasmic Reticulum ; Glucose ; Homeostasis ; Inflammation ; Insulin ; Insulin Resistance ; Lipid Metabolism ; Macrophages ; Obesity ; Phosphotransferases ; Sodium Salicylate

This study was conducted by consecutively transplanting spleens, which had gonads implanted previously. A total of 84 cases for infantile testicles and 106 cases for ovarian follicles were performed. In the case of ovarian implants, the results were determined by the total number of follicle implants. A modified spleen transplantation technique called double implantation of ovarian follicles was applied to increase the amount of the implants. In this technique, an extra spleen is implanted into the potential donor so that the ovarian follicles can be implanted to two different spleens, doubling the amount of implants. Through consecutive spleen transplantation, we observed the results beyond a typical rat's life span. In many of these cases, we found more aggressive forms of malignant tumor, seminoma and dysgerminoma. We present the results and discuss possible pathogenic mechanisms of tumor formation.
Animals ; Animals, Newborn ; Female ; Male ; Ovarian Neoplasms/*etiology ; Ovary/*transplantation ; Rats ; Rats, Inbred Lew ; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't ; Spleen/*surgery/*transplantation ; Testicular Neoplasms/*etiology/pathology ; Testis/*transplantation ; *Transplantation, Heterotopic

Purpose: Targeted next-generation sequencing (NGS) panels for solid tumors have been useful in clinical framework for accurate tumor diagnosis and identifying essential molecular aberrations. However, most cancer panels have been designed to address a wide spectrum of pan-cancer models, lacking integral prognostic markers that are highly specific to gliomas. Materials and Methods: To address such challenges, we have developed a glioma-specific NGS panel, termed “GliomaSCAN,” that is capable of capturing single nucleotide variations and insertion/deletion, copy number variation, and selected promoter mutations and structural variations that cover a subset of intron regions in 232 essential glioma-associated genes. We confirmed clinical concordance rate using pairwise comparison of the identified variants from whole exome sequencing (WES), immunohistochemical analysis, and fluorescence in situ hybridization. Results: Our panel demonstrated high sensitivity in detecting potential genomic variants that were present in the standard materials. To ensure the accuracy of our targeted sequencing panel, we compared our targeted panel to WES. The comparison results demonstrated a high correlation. Furthermore, we evaluated clinical utility of our panel in 46 glioma patients to assess the detection capacity of potential actionable mutations. Thirty-two patients harbored at least one recurrent somatic mutation in clinically actionable gene. Conclusion We have established a glioma-specific cancer panel. GliomaSCAN highly excelled in capturing somatic variations in terms of both sensitivity and specificity and provided potential clinical implication in facilitating genome-based clinical trials. Our results could provide conceptual advance towards improving the response of genomically guided molecularly targeted therapy in glioma patients.

PURPOSE: Glioblastoma (GBM) is classified as one of the most aggressive and lethal brain tumor. Great strides have been made in understanding the genomic and molecular underpinnings of GBM, which translated into development of new therapeutic approaches to combat such deadly disease. However, there are only few therapeutic agents that can effectively inhibit GBM invasion in a clinical framework. In an effort to address such challenges, we have generated anti-SEMA3A monoclonal antibody as a potential therapeutic antibody against GBM progression. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We employed public glioma datasets, Repository of Molecular Brain Neoplasia Data and The Cancer Genome Atlas, to analyze SEMA3A mRNA expression in human GBM specimens. We also evaluated for protein expression level of SEMA3A via tissue microarray (TMA) analysis. Cell migration and proliferation kinetics were assessed in various GBM patient-derived cells (PDCs) and U87-MG cell-line for SEMA3A antibody efficacy. GBM patient-derived xenograft (PDX) models were generated to evaluate tumor inhibitory effect of anti-SEMA3A antibody in vivo. RESULTS: By combining bioinformatics and TMA analysis, we discovered that SEMA3A is highly expressed in human GBM specimens compared to non-neoplastic tissues. We developed three different anti-SEMA3A antibodies, in fully human IgG form, through screening phage-displayed synthetic antibody library using a classical panning method. Neutralization of SEMA3A significantly reduced migration and proliferation capabilities of PDCs and U87-MG cell line in vitro. In PDX models, treatment with anti-SEMA3A antibody exhibited notable tumor inhibitory effect through down-regulation of cellular proliferative kinetics and tumor-associated macrophages recruitment. CONCLUSION: In present study, we demonstrated tumor inhibitory effect of SEMA3A antibody in GBM progression and present its potential relevance as a therapeutic agent in a clinical framework.
Antibodies ; Brain ; Brain Neoplasms ; Cell Line ; Cell Movement ; Computational Biology ; Dataset ; Down-Regulation ; Genome ; Glioblastoma* ; Glioma ; Heterografts ; Humans ; Immunoglobulin G ; In Vitro Techniques ; Kinetics ; Macrophages ; Mass Screening ; Methods ; RNA, Messenger ; Semaphorin-3A