No abstract

The endosomal barrier is a major bottleneck for the effective intracellular delivery of siRNA by nonviral nanocarriers. Here, we report a novel amphotericin B (AmB)-loaded, dual pH-responsive micelleplex platform for siRNA delivery. Micelles were self-assembled from poly(2-(dimethylamino)ethyl methacrylate)-block-poly(2-(diisopropylamino)ethyl methacrylate) (PDMAb-PDPA) diblock copolymers. At pH 7.4, AmB was loaded into the hydrophobic PDPA core, and siRNA was complexed with a positively charged PDMA shell to form the micelleplexes. After cellular uptake, the PDMA-b-PDPA/siRNA micelleplexes dissociated in early endosomes to release AmB. Live cell imaging studies demonstrated that released AmB significantly increased the ability of siRNA to overcome the endosomal barrier. Transfection studies showed that AmBloaded micelleplexes resulted in significant increase in luciferase (Luc) knockdown efficiency over the AmB-free control. The enhanced Luc knockdown efficiency was abolished by bafilomycin A1, a vacuolar ATPase inhibitor that inhibits the acidification of the endocytic organelles. These data support the central hypothesis that membrane poration by AmB and increased endosomal swelling and membrane tension by a "proton sponge" polymer provided a synergistic strategy to disrupt endosomes for improved intracellular delivery of siRNA. Graphical Abstract*

Cryospheric forcing, that is, decreasing Arctic sea ice and increasing Eurasia snow, exacerbated extreme winter haze in China.

Purpose Secretory clusterin (sCLU)/apolipoprotein J is an extracellular chaperone that has been functionally implicated in DNA repair, cell cycle regulation, apoptotic cell death, and tumorigenesis. It exerts a prosurvival function against most therapeutic treatments for cancer and is currently an antisense target in clinical trials for tumor therapy. However, the molecular mechanisms underlying its function remained largely unknown. Experimental Design The molecular effects of small interfering RNA-mediated sCLU depletion in nonstressed human cancer cells were examined by focusing entirely on the endogenously expressed sCLU protein molecules and combining molecular, biochemical, and microscopic approaches. Results We report here that sCLU depletion in nonstressed human cancer cells signals stress that induces p53-dependent growth retardation and high rates of endogenous apoptosis. We discovered that increased apoptosis in sCLU-depleted cells correlates to altered ratios of proapoptotic to antiapoptotic Bcl-2 protein family members, is amplified by p53, and is executed by mitochondrial dysfunction. sCLU depletion-related stress signals originate from several sites, because sCLU is an integral component of not only the secretory pathway but also the nucleocytosolic continuum and mitochondria. In the cytoplasm, sCLU depletion disrupts the Ku70-Bax complex and triggers Bax activation and relocation to mitochondria. We show that sCLU binds and thereby stabilizes the Ku70-Bax protein complex serving as a cytosol retention factor for Bax. Conclusions We suggest that elevated sCLU levels may enhance tumorigenesis by interfering with Bax proapoptotic activities and contribute to one of the major characteristics of cancer cells, that is, resistance to apoptosis.

The phosphorylation of cyclin D1 at threonine 286 by glycogen synthase kinase 3␤ (GSK3␤) has been shown to be required for the ubiquitination and nuclear export of cyclin D1 and its subsequent degradation in the proteasome. The mutation of the nearby residue, threonine 288, to nonphosphorylatable alanine has also been shown to reduce the ubiquitination of cyclin D1, suggesting that phosphorylation at threonine 288 may also lead to degradation of cyclin D1. We now demonstrate that the G 0 /G 1 -active arginine-directed protein kinase Mirk/dyrk1B binds to cyclin D1 and phosphorylates cyclin D1 at threonine 288 in vivo and that the cyclin D1-T288A construct is more stable than wild-type cyclin Cell cycle progression in eukaryotic cells is mediated by cyclin-dependent kinases (CDKs). 1 The D-type cyclins, D1, D2, and D3, increase in nuclear abundance in G 1 in response to mitogens, facilitate the import of CDK4 into the nucleus (1), and assemble combinatorially with CDK4 or CDK6 into complexes that phosphorylate the retinoblastoma protein, releasing factors needed for the progression into S phase. Cyclin D1 is translocated into the cytoplasm during S phase where it is destroyed by the proteasome following phosphorylation at threonine 286 by GSK3␤ (2, 3). Mutant cyclin D1-T286A, which cannot be phosphorylated by GSK3␤, is stabilized in the nucleus and is capable of transforming murine fibroblasts, whereas overexpression of wild-type cyclin D1 cannot act alone to transform such cells (4). A cyclin D1 isoform derived by alternative splicing was shown to lack threonine 286, enabling this cyclin D1 isoform to remain nuclear throughout the cell cycle, remain highly expressed, and function to facilitate transformation of NIH3T3 cells (5). This cyclin D1 splice variant was also found in tumor-derived cells and primary human esophageal tumors (5). Overexpression of cyclin D1 occurs in several cancers including breast, pancreatic, and esophageal (6), suggesting that either increased transcription, transcription of stable splice variants, or dysregulation of cyclin D1 turnover may frequently occur in cancer.In this study, we have studied the interaction of the ubiquitously expressed protein kinase Mirk/dyrk1B with cyclin D1. Mirk/dyrk1B is an arginine-directed serine/threonine kinase (7), which functions as a transcriptional co-activator and is activated through the stress-activated mitogen-activated protein kinase kinase MKK3 (8). We have shown recently that Mirk stabilizes the CDK inhibitor p27kip1 in the G 0 phase of the cell cycle in NIH3T3 fibroblasts, whereas depletion of Mirk by RNA interference increases cell cycling as measured by increased PCNA expression (9). Mirk expression is decreased by mitogen activation of the MEK-ERK pathway during G 1 (10), restricting Mirk function primarily to G 0 and early G 1 . We now confirm that transient overexpression of Mirk in nontransformed Mv1Lu lung epithelial cells increases the length of G 0 /G 1 by FACS analysis and that Mirk targets the G 1 cell cycle regulator, cyclin D1, t...