Background Urothelial bladder cancer (BLCA) is one of the most common internal malignancies worldwide with poor prognosis. This study aims to explore effective prognostic biomarkers and construct a prognostic risk score model for patients with BLCA. Methods Weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) was used for identifying the co-expression module related to the pathological stage of BLCA based on the RNA-Seq data retrieved from The Cancer Genome Atlas database. Prognostic biomarkers screened by Cox proportional hazard regression model and random forest were used to construct a risk score model that can predict the prognosis of patients with BLCA. The GSE13507 dataset was used as the independent testing dataset to test the performance of the risk score model in predicting the prognosis of patients with BLCA. Results WGCNA identified seven co-expression modules, in which the brown module consisted of 77 genes was most significantly correlated with the pathological stage of BLCA. Cox proportional hazard regression model and random forest identified TPST1 and P3H4 as prognostic biomarkers. Elevated TPST1 and P3H4 expressions were associated with the high pathological stage and worse survival. The risk score model based on the expression level of TPST1 and P3H4 outperformed pathological stage indicators and previously proposed prognostic models. Conclusion The gene co-expression network-based study could provide additional insight into the tumorigenesis and progression of BLCA, and our proposed risk score model may aid physicians in the assessment of the prognosis of patients with BLCA. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s41065-019-0100-1) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The use of mushrooms as functional foods and in the treatment of diseases has a long history. Inonotus obliquus is a mushroom belonging to the Hymenochaetaceae family and has possible anticancer, antiviral, and hypoglycemic properties. Chemical analysis of this mushroom has allowed the identification of various constituents such as melanins, phenolic compounds, and lanostane-type triterpenoids. A plethora of findings have highlighted the potential molecular mechanisms of actions of this mushroom such as its ability to scavenge reactive oxygen species, inhibit the growth of tumors, decrease inflammation and insulin resistance in type 2 diabetes, and stimulate the immune system. This review summarizes the relevant findings with reference to the therapeutic potential of this mushroom in countering the progression of cancers, diabetes mellitus, and antiviral activities, while highlighting its possible molecular mechanisms of action. The possible role of this mushroom as a therapeutic agent in addressing the pathogenesis of diabetes and cancer has also been suggested.

Basal and luminal subtypes of muscle-invasive bladder cancer (MIBC) have distinct molecular profiles and heterogeneous clinical behaviors. The interactions between mRNAs and lncRNAs, which might be regulated by miRNAs, have crucial roles in many cancers. However, the miRNA-dependent crosstalk between lncRNA and mRNA in specific MIBC subtypes still remains unclear. In this study, we first classified MIBC into two conservative subtypes using miRNA, mRNA and lncRNA expression data derived from The Cancer Genome Atlas. Then we investigated subtype-related biological pathways and evaluated the subtype classification performance using Decision Trees, Random Forest and eXtreme Gradient Boosting (XGBoost). At last, we explored potential miRNA-mediated lncRNA-mRNA crosstalks based on co-expression analysis. Our results show that: (1) the luminal subtype is primarily characterized by upregulation of metabolism-related pathways while the basal subtype is predominantly characterized by upregulation of epithelial-mesenchymal transition, metastasis, and immune system process-related pathways; (2) the XGBoost prediction model is consistently robust for classification of the molecular subtypes of MIBC across four datasets (The area under the ROC curve > 0.9); (3) the expression levels of the molecules in the miR-200c and miR141-mediated lncRNA-mRNA crosstalks differ considerably between the two subtypes and have close relationships with the prognosis of MIBC. The miR-200c and miR-141-dependent mRNA-lncRNA crosstalks might be of great significance in tumorigenesis and tumor progression and may serve as the novel prognostic predictors and classification markers of MIBC subtypes.

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It is reputed that the ideal therapeutic approaches to treatment of patients with acute coronary syndrome (ACS) and myocardium infarction (MI) should be aimed at the inflammation reaction triggers. This study investigated the effectiveness of the impact of L- 17 compound of the group of 5- phenyl substituted-6H-1,3,4-thiadiazine-2-amines upon the course of experimental MI as compared to the impact of a preparation, officially registered in Russia as an immunomodulator, Tamerit, belonging to phthalhydrazid derivative substance. Acute MI in rats was induced by left coronary artery coagulation. Histological study of the myocardium sections and biochemical analysis has been carried out at the 1st and 7th days of the experimental MI. The conducted investigations have shown that under the action of immunocorrectors the inflammation reaction character changes, exudative/destructive inflammation is replaced by a proliferative-cellular one. Animals' blood biochemical analysis at the background of L-17 and Tamerit introduction has shown a decrease of aminotransferases and lactatedehydrogenases activity in blood as compared to the reference group of animals' indicators, which is evidently caused by epicardial injury of myocardium and lesser amount of the alternative cardiomyocytes. At the same time, no noticeable difference in biochemical characteristics in groups, having been treated to immunomodulators of different chemical composition was identified, which is the sign of the essential similarity of their impact. Thus, immunocorrectors of different chemical groups (Tamerit and compound L17) diminish the volume of initial myocardial infarction and accelerate the granulation processes in course of MI, and represent a new category of treatment agents.