Over the past two decades, obesity has been one of the major public health concerns in most countries. In the search for new molecules that could be used for the treatment of obesity, good perspectives have been opened up for polyphenols, a class of natural bioactive phytochemicals. Experimental and limited clinical trial evidence supports that some polyphenols such as quercetin, curcumin, and resveratrol have potential benefit functions on obesity treatment. This brief review focuses on the main functions of the above-named polyphenols on adipose tissue. These polyphenols may play beneficial effects on adipose tissue under obese condition by alleviating intracellular oxidative stress, reducing chronic low-grade inflammation, inhibiting adipogenesis and lipogenesis, and suppressing the differentiation of preadipocytes to mature adipocytes.

Circular RNAs (circRNAs) have emerged as important regulators of various cellular processes and have been implicated in cancer. Previously, we reported the discovery of several dysregulated circRNAs including circPABPC1 (polyadenylate-binding protein 1) in human hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), although their roles in HCC development remained unclear. Here, we show that circPABPC1 is preferentially lost in tumor cells from clinical samples and inhibits both intrahepatic and distant metastases in a mouse xenograft model. This tumor-suppressive function of circPABPC1 can be attributed to its inhibition of cell adhesion and migration through down-regulating a key member of the integrin family, ITGB1 (β1 integrin). Mass spectrometry and biochemical evidence demonstrate that circPABPC1 directly links ITGB1 to the 26S proteasome for degradation in a ubiquitination-independent manner. Our data have revealed an uncanonical route for integrin turnover and a previously unidentified mode of action for circRNAs in HCC that can be harnessed for anticancer treatment.

The B7 gene family has crucial roles in the regulation of adaptive cellular immunity. In cancer, deregulation of co-inhibitory B7 molecules is associated with reduced antitumor immunity and cancer immune evasion. FDA approval of cancer immunotherapy antibodies against cytotoxic T lymphocyte-associated protein 4 (CTLA-4) and programmed cell death-1 (PD-1)-both ligands of the B7 family-demonstrate the impact of these checkpoint regulators in cancer. Using data from cBioPortal, we performed comprehensive molecular profiling of the 10 currently known B7 family proteins in 105 different cancers. B7 family members were amplified in breast cancer: with B7 mRNA levels upregulated in a cohort of 1,098 patients with all types of breast cancer and in 82 patients with triple-negative breast cancer. Promoter methylation analysis indicated an epigenetic basis for deregulation of certain B7 family genes in breast cancer. Moreover, patients with B7-H6 genomic alterations had significantly worse overall survival, and certain clinical attributes were associated with B7-H6 expression, which indicates that B7-H6 may be a potential target for breast cancer immunotherapy. Finally, using network analysis (based on data from cBioportal), we identified BTLA, MARCH8, PLSCR1 and SMAD3 as potentially involved in T cell signaling under regulation of B7 family proteins.

Recent studies have revealed that miR-92a is overexpressed in several types of malignancies and provides a protumorigenic effect. Our findings demonstrate that the high expression of miR-92a in human glioma specimens is significantly correlated with low levels of BCL2L11 (Bim) protein and high-grade glioma. Here, we present the first evidence that miR-92a antisense oligonucleotide (AS-miR-92a) provides a tumor suppressive effect via induction of apoptosis in human glioma cells. In addition, we show that Bim is a direct functional target of miR-92a. Introducing Bim cDNA without 3'UTR abrogates miR-92a-induced cell survival. Further investigations will focus on the therapeutic use of AS-miR‑92a-mediated antitumor effects in glioma.

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Histone methylation is thought to control the regulation of genetic program and the dysregulation of it has been found to be closely associated with cancer. JMJD3 has been identified as an H3K27 demethylase and its role in cancer development is context specific. The role of JMJD3 in gastric cancer (GC) has not been examined. In this study, JMJD3 expression was determined. The prognostic significance of JMJD3 and its association with clinical parameters were evaluated. JMJD3 dysregulation mechanism and targets were analyzed. The effect of JMJD3 mutation was determined by functional study. Results showed that JMJD3 was overexpressed in different patient cohorts and also by bioinformatics analysis. High JMJD3 expression was correlated with shortened overall survival in patients with GC and was an independent prognosis predictor. Genetic aberration and DNA methylation might be involved in the deregulation of JMJD3 in GC. Downstream network of JMJD3 was analyzed and several novel potential targets were identified. Furthermore, functional study discovered that both demethylase-dependent and demethylase-independent mechanisms were involved in the oncogenic role of JMJD3 in GC. Importantly, histone demethylase inhibitor GSK-J4 could reverse the oncogenic effect of JMJD3 overexpression. In conclusion, our study report the oncogenic role of JMJD3 in GC for the first time. JMJD3 might serve as an important epigenetic therapeutic target and/or prognostic predictor in GC.

CONCLUSIONS: LLGL1 possessed a tumor-suppressor role as an inhibitor of chemoresistance by regulating OSMR-extracellular signalregulated kinase 2/Sp1 signaling. The data sets generated and analyzed during the current study are available in the Gene Expression Omnibus repository (ID: GSE64681).

The dysregulation of physiological microRNA (miRNA) activity has been shown to play an important role in gliomagenesis. In a previous study, using microRNA arrays and glioma tissues found that miR-27a was upregulated, which was also identified in the glioma cell lines and samples by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR). In this study, in order to explore the potential roles of miR-27a in the progression of glioma, we first utilized text-mining of PubMed abstracts with natural language processing (NLP) to identify 1,168 glioma-related molecules. In addition, miR-27a targets predicted by computational methods were integrated with the results from NLP analysis, followed by Gene Ontology (GO), pathway and network analysis. We identified 33 hub genes by overlap calculation and demonstrated that miR-27a may be involved in the progression of glioma through adherens junction, focal adhesion, the neurotrophin signaling pathway, the MAPK signaling pathway, the transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β) signaling pathway, cytokine-cytokine receptor interactions, the p53 signaling pathway, the apoptotic signaling pathway, as well as others. Our data may provide researchers with a better understanding of the mechanisms of the miR-27a-target network in glioma initiation and progression.