Circular RNAs were recently identified as a novel type of noncoding RNAs. An increasing number of reports have demonstrated their essential regulatory roles in various biological processes and human diseases, including cancer. However, the role of circRNA in cervical cancer (CC) remains largely unknown. In the current study, we investigated the physiological functions of circ_0067934 during CC development and progression. We found that circ_0067934 was overexpressed in CC tissues and cell lines. Circ_0067934 upregulation was associated with advanced stage, lymph node metastasis, and poor prognosis in CC patients. Knockdown of circ_0067934 suppressed the proliferation, colony formation, migration, invasion, and epithelial‐mesenchymal transition of CC cells in vitro. Circ_0067934 loss also inhibited CC tumor growth in vivo. Mechanistically, silencing circ_0067934 increased miR‐545 expression. MiR‐545 repressed EIF3C expression through targeting its 3′‐untranslated region. MiR‐545 suppressed the proliferation, migration, and invasion of CC cells, whereas restoration of EIF3C could rescue the effects of circ_0067934 knockdown. Taken together, our findings revealed that circ_0067934 promotes CC progression via miR‐545/EIF3C axis. Our study may provide a new insight into the pathogenesis of CC.

Treatment of recurrent and metastatic cervical cancer remains a challenge, especially in developing countries, which lack efficient screening programs. In recent years, artemisinin and its derivatives, such as dihydroartemisinin (DHA), which were traditionally used as anti-malarial agent, have been shown to inhibit tumor growth with low toxicity to normal cells. In this study, we investigated mechanisms underlying the anti-tumor effect of DHA in cervical cancer. We evaluated the role of DHA on the expression of bcl-2 and Raf kinase inhibitor protein (RKIP), which is a suppressor of metastasis. The MTT assay was used to compare the proliferation of untreated and DHA-treated Hela and Caski cervical cancer cells. Flow cytometry was used to determine the percentage of cells at each stage of the cell cycle in untreated and DHA-treated cells. We used RT-PCR and western blots to determine the expression of bcl-2 and RKIP mRNA and proteins. We evaluated the effect of DHA treatment in nude mice bearing Hela or Caski tumors. DHA-treated cells showed a time- and dose-dependent inhibition of proliferation and a significant increase in apoptosis. The expression of RKIP was significantly upregulated and the expression of bcl-2 was significantly downregulated in DHA-treated cells compared with control cells. DHA treatment caused (1) a significant inhibition of tumor growth and (2) a significant increase in the apoptotic index in nude mice bearing Hela or Caski tumors. Our data suggest that DHA inhibits cervical cancer growth via upregulation of RKIP and downregulation of bcl-2.

In2O3 nanoparticles hybrid twins hexagonal disk (THD) ZnO with different ratios were fabricated by a hydrothermal method. The as-obtained ZnO/In2O3 composites are constituted by hexagonal disks ZnO with diameters of about 1 μm and In2O3 nanoparticles with sizes of about 20–50 nm. With the increase of In2O3 content in ZnO/In2O3 composites, the absorption band edges of samples shifted from UV to visible light region. Compared with pure ZnO, the ZnO/In2O3 composites show enhanced photocatalytic activities for degradation of methyl orange (MO) and 4-nitrophenol (4-NP) under solar light irradiation. Due to suitable alignment of their energy band-gap structure of the In2O3 and ZnO, the formation of type п heterostructure can enhance efficient separation of photo-generate electro-hole pairs and provides convenient carrier transfer paths.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s11671-017-2233-3) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Well-dispersed In2O3/ZnO nanoparticles covered Ag nanowires ternary component was synthesized by a facile co-precipitation process and exhibited excellent visible light photocatalytic performance.

Ovarian cancer is a leading cause of cancer-related women mortality in China. In recent years, the molecular mechanisms involved in ovarian carcinoma development and/or progression have been intensely studied, and several genes have been identified. Deleted in Colorectal Carcinoma (DCC), is an important tumor suppressor gene, which is inactivated in many kinds of tumors, and its function(s) is not clarified. Even though the lost expression of DCC occurred in later stages of multistep colorectal carcinogenesis, its contribution to the onset or progression of ovarian cancer is not fully understood. To investigate DCC expression in ovarian cancer, we studied 254 clinical samples by RT-PCR. Our results revealed that 52% malignant ovarian cancer did not express DCC gene. By contrast, DCC expression was observed in all normal ovary tissues and 80% benign ovarian tumors. Obviously, there was a significant correlation between DCC expression and ovarian cancer, especially in the epithelial ovarian cancer. The present study also suggested that the loss expression of DCC occurred more frequently in the cases of later clinical stage, higher pathological grade, and poorer prognosis. In the other part of this study, we further explored DCC expression after transfection in two kinds of ovarian cancer cell lines, namely SKOV3 cell and HO-8910 cell, using RT-PCR and immunocytochemistry. The results indicated that DCC expressed in SKOV3-DCC and HO-8910-DCC cells, and ultrastructural analysis showed the appearance of apoptotic features in them. Furthermore, cell growth was markedly down-regulated in above groups of cells, indicating that transfection with the DCC constructs can suppress the growth of tumor cells. In conclusion, our results suggest an association of lost expression of DCC with the ovarian cancer, and DCC gene may inhibit the growth of ovarian carcinoma cells. However, this result needs further trials with a larger sample.

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A high-sensitivity surface plasmon resonance (SPR) sensor is designed and analyzed numerically. The sensor is constructed on the eightfold U-shaped photonic quasi-crystal fiber (PQF) and coated with indium tin oxide (ITO). The coupling between the core mode and surface plasmon polariton mode is enhanced due to shortening of the distance between the core and the ITO layer, so that the PQF-SPR sensor exhibits high refractive index (RI) sensitivity in the near-infrared region. The maximum wavelength sensitivity and the corresponding resolution of this sensor are 42,000 nm/RIU and 2.38 × 10 − 6 R I U , respectively. The average wavelength sensitivity is 12,750 nm/RIU in the refractive index range of 1.306–1.386. This advanced sensor is suitable for the determination of RIs in the near-infrared region.

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