The expression and activity of MMP-9 are upregulated in NSCLC and are related to the pathologic type and clinical stage of NSCLC. Significantly higher expression and activity of MMP-9 in tumor tissue than in the surrounding tissue supports the important role of this metalloproteinase in the growth of lung cancer, and it could be used as a suggested therapeutic target.

Although decreased SOD activity in FF has no effect on fertilization rate and/or embryo quality, serum SOD activity could be a clinical parameter for determining systemic oxidative stress in PCOS.

CLU gene expression was significantly increased in the semen samples of infertile men. It correlated negatively with sperm count, motility, acrosin activity, linearity index and linear velocity, and positively with the percent of sperm abnormal forms and DNA fragmentation.

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a highly aggressive malignancy characterized by its high resistance to chemotherapeutic agents leading to high morbidity and mortality rates. Capsaicin, the active ingredient of hot peppers, has been reported for its potential as an active anti-cancer agent. In this study, we hypothesized that incorporating capsaicin into nanocarriers might improve its pharmacokinetics. As a result, densely dispersed capsaicin-loaded trimethyl-chitosan nanoparticles (CL-NPs) were developed and their anti-tumor effect was investigated in comparison with capsaicin on human HepG2 cells. The CL-NPs were obtained via ionotropic gelation of cationic trimethyl chitosan (TMCS). Both synthesized TMCS and TMCS-based nanoparticles were characterized using zeta analyzer, nanosizer, and TEM. Human hepatoma cell line (HepG2) were cultured then divided into 4 groups receiving ethanol, conventional capsaicin, plain nanoparticles (PNs), or CL-NPs in dose of 100 µM. The apoptotic activity in the cell line was evaluated by DNA fragmentation assay, immunocytochemistry for caspase-3 and BCL-2, in addition to gene expression studies of BCL-2, and Bax genes via RT-PCR. The capsaicin effect on HCC response to chemotherapy was also assessed by studying the level of MDR-1 (multidrug resistance) gene expression. CL-NPs in dose of 100 µM, 24 h after treatment, showed more upregulation of Bax and downregulation of both BCL-2 and MDR-1 genes in comparison with conventional capsaicin. In addition, immunocytochemistry assay revealed that both capsaicin and plain NPs show higher expression of caspase-3 and lower expression of BCL-2 than the control group, while the group treated with CL-NPs showed complete necrosis. This indicates that plain TMCS nanoparticles had a little anti-apoptotic effect by themselves. Our findings highlight the potential of the developed CL-NPs as an effective anti-cancer agent which efficiently induced apoptosis in human HepG2 hepatocarcinoma cells. Moreover, a possible role in improving response to chemotherapy has been observed through downregulation of MDR-1 gene. dermatological inflammatory-associated diseases [11-18]. Moreover, the anti-cancer effect of capsaicin has been a hot area of research. In recent years, capsaicin has been used in suppressing the carcinogenicity of many types of tumors as: lung, prostate, breast, gastric, pancreatic, colorectal, and osteosarcoma [19-26].

Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is a multisystem autoimmune disease with a suggested genetic basis. The newly identified human programmed cell death 1 gene could be associated with SLE susceptibility. We aimed to investigate the association between programmed cell death 1 polymorphism (PD1.3G/A (rs11568821) and PD1.5C/T (rs2227981)) with the risk of SLE in the Egyptian female population. This retrospective case–control study included 150 Egyptian females; 70 patients diagnosed to have SLE and 80 age-matched healthy controls. The two single nucleotide polymorphisms of the pdcd1 gene were genotyped by allelic discrimination through TaqMan real-time polymerase chain reaction. The PD1.3GG genotype and G allele as well as the PD1.5CC genotype were significantly more frequent in SLE patients (67.1%; p = 0.023, 82.1%; p = 0.0021, 62.9%; p = 0.0287 respectively). The GC haplotype was the most common haplotype among SLE patients (70.77%) with a reported significant linkage disequilibrium between the two studied polymorphisms ( p = 0.0041). Although most of the studies showed significant association of SLE with the minor alleles, we reported a significant association between the dominant genotypes (PD1.3GG and PD1.5CC) as well as the major G allele with the risk of SLE among Egyptian females.