In many organisms, antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) display wide activities in innate host defense against microbial pathogens. Mammalian AMPs include the cathelicidin and defensin families. LL37 is the only one member of the cathelicidin family of host defense peptides expressed in humans. Since its discovery, it has become clear that they have pleiotropic effects. In addition to its antibacterial properties, many studies have shown that LL37 is also involved in a wide variety of biological activities, including tissue repair, inflammatory responses, hemotaxis, and chemokine induction. Moreover, recent studies suggest that LL37 exhibits the intricate and contradictory effects in promoting or inhibiting tumor growth. Indeed, an increasing amount of evidence suggests that human LL37 including its fragments and analogs shows anticancer effects on many kinds of cancer cell lines, although LL37 is also involved in cancer progression. Focusing on recent information, in this review, we explore and summarize how LL37 contributes to anticancer effect as well as discuss the strategies to enhance delivery of this peptide and selectivity for cancer cells.
Traumatic spinal cord injury (TSCI) is a common catastrophic disease. Timely diagnosis and treatment by nursing professional have reduced the mortality, but the long-term recovery of neurological functions remains ominous. After the occurrence of TSCI, tissue bleeding, edema and spinal dural binding leads to increase in internal pressure of spinal canal and spinal cord parenchyma, further causing the pathophysiological processes of ischemia and hypoxia, eventually accelerating the cascade of secondary spinal cord injury. Reasonable surgery time with appropriate surgical decompression strategies can reduce the associated secondary injury. However, disagreement about the safety and effectiveness of decompression surgery and the timing of surgery still exist. The level and severity of nerve injury does have impact on the timing of surgery, therefore clinical TSCI subsets may benefit from early surgery. Early surgery perhaps has little effect on recovery from complete TSCI, but relatively improves in patients with incomplete injury. Early decompression should be considered in patients with incomplete cervical TSCI. Patient age should not be used as an exclusion criterion for early surgery. The best time point for early surgery should not be limited by advances, but should also be defined by the shortest duration to thoroughly examine the patient's condition and stabilize the patient's state. After adequate assessment of the patient's condition, a promising emergency myelotomy decompression style is feasible. Therefore, number of conditions should be considered, such as standardized decompression methods, indications and operation timing to ensure the effectiveness and safety of early surgical intervention, promotion of the functional recovery of residual nerve tissue.
Background: Recent studies have indicated that epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) benefits a variety of neurological insults. This study was performed to investigate the neuroprotective effect of EGCG after brachial plexus root avulsion in SD rats. Methods: One hundred twenty SD rats were randomized into the following three groups: an EGCG group, an Avulsion group, and a Sham group. There were 40 rats in each group. EGCG (100 mg/kg, i.p.) or normal saline was administered to rats immediately following the injuries. The treatment was continued from day 1 to day 7, and the animals were sacrificed on days 3, 7, 14 and 28 post-surgery for the harvesting of spinal cord samples for Nissl staining, immunohistochemistry (caspase-3, p-JNK, p-c-Jun) and western blot analysis (p-JNK, JNK, p-c-Jun, c-Jun). Results: EGCG treatment caused significant increases in the percentage of surviving motoneurons at days 14 and 28 (P<0.05) compared to the control animals. At days 3 and 7 after avulsion, the numbers of caspase-3-positive motoneurons in the EGCG-treated animals were significantly fewer than in the control animals (P<0.05). The numbers of p-JNK-positive motoneurons and the ratio of p-JNK/JNK were no significant differences between the Avulsion group and the EGCG-treated group after injury at any time point. The numbers of p-c-Jun-positive motoneurons and the ratio of p-c-Jun/c-Jun were significantly lower in EGCG-treated group compared with the Avulsion group at 3d and 7d after injury (p<0.05). Conclusions: Our results indicated that motoneurons were protected by EGCG against the cell death induced by brachial plexus root avulsion, and this effect was correlated with inhibiting c-Jun phosphorylation.
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