International Journal of Molecular and Cellular Medicine
Volume:4 Issue: 14, Spring 2015

Parkinson''s disease (PD) is a chronic neurodegenerative condition which has the second largest incidence rate among all other neurodegenerative disorders barring Alzheimer''s disease (AD). Currently there is no cure and researchers continue to probe the therapeutic prospect in cell cultures and animal models of PD. Out of several factors contributing to PD prognosis, the role of p38 MAPKs (mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinase) and PI3K/AKT signalling module in PD brains is crucial because impaired balance between the pro-apoptotic and anti-apoptotic pathways trigger unwanted phenotypes such as microglia activation, neuroinflammation, oxidative stress, and apoptosis. These factors continue challenging the brain homeostasis in initial stages thereby essentially assisting the dopaminergic (DA) neurons towards progressive degeneration in PD. Neurotherapeutics against PD shall then be targeted against the misregulated accomplices of the p38 and PI3K/AKT cascades. In this review, we have outlined many such established mechanism involving the p38 MAPK and PI3K/AKT pathways which can offer therapeutic windows for rectification of aberrant DA neuronal dynamics in PD brains.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a demyelinating neuro- inflammatory autoimmune disease of the central nervous system. Genetic predisposition has long been suspected in the etiology of this disease. The association between MTHFR polymorphisms and MS has been ivestigated in different ethnic groups. We investigated the association between MTHFR C677T and A1298C missense variants and MS in 180 patients and 231 age- and gender-matched healthy controls in a Southern Iranian population. The mutagenically separated PCR (MS-PCR) and PCR-RFLP methods were used to genotype MTHFR at position 677 and 1298, respectively. Compared with controls, we observed a strong association between two MTHFR variants and the risk of developing MS. Subjects carrying 677T allele (CT and TT genotypes) had increased susceptibility to MS as compared to those carrying CC genotype (odds ratio (OR) for CT= 2.9, 95% confidence interval (95% CI)= 1.88-4.49; OR for TT= 6.23, 95% CI= 3.08-12.59). The variant 1298AC genotype also increased the risk for MS among our study population (OR= 2.14, 95% CI= 1.37-3.34). Combined genotype analysis for two MTHFR SNPs revealed that compared to the wild type genotypes (677CC/1298AA), 3 genotypes including TT/AC, CT/AC, and TT/AA were significantly at increased risk for MS development (OR= 13.9, 5.3, and 4.9, respectively). Our results suggest a possible gene dose- dependent association between MTHFR mutrant alleles and the risk of MS development.

Recognition of the molecular mechanisms of cAMP action against DNA damage-induced apoptosis can be useful to improve the efficacy of DNA damaging therapeutic agents. Considering the critical role of bcl-2-associated death promoter (BAD) and p53 proteins in DNA damage -induced apoptosis, the aim of this study was to assess the effect of cAMP-elevating agents on these proteins in doxorubicin-treated pre-B acute lymphoblastic leukemia (pre-B ALL) NALM-6 cells.The pre-B ALL cell line NALM-6 was cultured and treated with doxorubicin in combination with or without cAMP-elevating agents forskolin and 3-isobutyl-1-methylxanthine (IBMX). Cell viability was measured by trypan blue staining and MTT assay. For evaluation of apoptosis, annexin-V staining by flow cytometry and caspase-3 activity assay were used. Protein expression of p53, BAD and phoshorylated BAD was detected by western blotting analysis.cAMP-increasing agents diminished the doxorubicin-mediated cytotoxicity in NALM-6 cells as indicated by the viability assays. Annexin-V apoptosis assay showed that the cAMP-elevating agents decreased doxorubicin-induced apoptosis. Moreover, doxorubicin-induced caspase-3 activity was attenuated in the presence of cAMP-increasing agents. Western blot results revealed the reduced expression of p53 protein in cells treated with combination of cAMP-elevating agents and doxorubicin in contrast to cells treated with doxorubicin alone. Expression of total BAD protein was not affected by doxorubicin and cAMP-elevating agents. However, phosphorylation of BAD protein was induced in the presence of cAMP-elevating agents. Our study suggests that elevated cAMP levels inhibit doxorubicin-induced apoptosis in pre-B ALL cells through induction of BAD phosphorylation and abrogation of p53 accumulation.

Breast Cancer (BC) is considered as one of the most important causes of death worldwide. Previous studies showed that apolipoprotein B mRNA- editing catalytic polypeptide-like 3 (APOBEC3) gene deletion significantly increased the risk of BC risk in Chinese and European women. The present study aimed to assess the possible impact of APOBEC3 deletion and the risk of BC in a sample of Iranian population. The APOBEC3 insertion/deletion (I/D) was analyzed in a case- control study including 262 BC patients and 217 healthy women. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) was used to genotype the variant in APOBEC3 gene. The findings of this study showed that I/D as well as I/D+D/D genotype increased the risk of BC (OR= 1.57, 95% CI= 1.07- 2.31, p= 0.025 and OR= 1.50, 95% CI= 1.03- 2.19, p= 0.037, respectively) in comparison with I/I genotype. In conclusion, our findings suggest that APOBEC3 deletion polymorphism increased the risk of BC in an Iranian population in the southeast of Iran.

Telomerase and systems controlling their activity have been of great attention. There are controversies regarding the role of the alternative splicing forms of the human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT), the catalytic subunit of telomerase. Therefore, the correlation between telomerase enzyme activity, the abundance of alternatively spliced variants of hTERT and doubling time of a series of cancer cell lines originated from hematopoietic, breast, colorectal, neural, ovarian, lung, kidney, bladder, prostate and head and neck cancers were investigated. Expression levels of four different variants of hTERT (the full length, -deletion, -deletion and /-deletion) were quantitatively measured by real time PCR. Telomerase activity was determined by the telomerase repeat amplification protocol (TRAP) while doubling time of the cells measured by plotting growth curves. Results showed high diversity in the relative proportions of hTERT transcripts while the majority of the cells expressed the full length variant as the main transcript. Telomerase activity could not be detected in all cells. Relative assessment of hTERT expression showed greater expression of the -deleted variant in the telomerase negative cells (P= 0.04). Those cells possessed the -deleted variant to a smaller extent when compared to the cells with telomerase activity. Greater association between full length spliced variant and -variant expression was observed in cells presenting telomerase activity (P= 0.0007, r= 0.74). High degrees of variation among the studied cells regarding the pattern of hTERT expression were present. In spite that, the regulatory roles of hTERT on telomerase activity is still a potential to be utilized as targets for cancer therapies.

The aim of this study was to investigate the possible role of multiple inherited thrombophilic gene variations in women with unexplained spontaneous abortions. For this purpose, the Factor V Leiden (FVL) (rs6025), Prothrombin G20210A (rs1799963), MTHFR C677T (rs1801133), PAI-1 4G/5G (rs1799889), ACE I/D (rs1799752), eNOS E298D (rs1799983), and Apo E E2/E3/E4 (rs429358) polymorphisms were genotyped and correlated in spontaneously aborted fetal materials, their mothers and fertile women. Twenty three abortion materials, 22 women with ≥1 unexplained fetal loss, and 22 control subjects with at least two healthy term infants as a control group were studied. Target SNPs for each gene were analyzed by real time-PCR technique after genomic DNA isolation from maternal blood-EDTA, control group blood-EDTA and spontaneously aborted fetal tissues. Some cases had a single thrombophilic polymorphism, but the rest of the patients and fetal materials had combined thrombophilic polymorphisms. The PAI-1 4G/5G+4G/4G (P= 0.0017), 4G/4G (P= 0.0253), eNOS 894GT+894TT (P=0.0011) genotypes and T allele (P=0.0185), Apo E E3/E4+E3/E2+E2/E4 (P<0.0001) genotypes, E2 (P<0.0001) and E4 (P<0.0001) alleles were higher in spontaneously aborted fetal materials when compared to their mothers and control group. The Factor V Leiden rs6025, Prothrombin G20210A, MTHFR C677T, ACE I/D genotypes were different for each group but not statistically significant due to relatively small size of the samples (P>0.05). Our results indicated that combined thrombophilic gene variations may be associated with increased risk for spontaneous abortions and results need to be confirmed by larger sample size.

The current study highlights the in vitro antioxidant and antitumor activity of the previously-synthesized hydrazone derivatives against various free radicals and human cancer cell lines, respectively. The anticancer efficacies of the compound were tested by measuring cytotoxicity in cancer cell lines HeLa, A549, and non-cancerous NL20 cells. Compounds possessing electron-donor methoxy and methyl substitutions at the para position of the phenyl ring moiety showed a concentration dependent free radical scavenging effects. The free radical-scavenging potential of synthetic compounds 11 and 14 may have significant impact on the prevention of free radical-induced oxidative stress and carcinogenesis. The results from cytotoxicity and cell migration assay showed that the substitution of electron-withdrawing fluoro, chloro and bromo functional groups induced a significant (P< 0.001) loss of cell viability and inhibited the invasive potential of the human cancer cells. Additionally, these compounds showed significantly (P< 0.05) a less toxicity toward non-cancerous NL20 cells. Docking studies revealed interactions of compound 10 with p38α MAP kinase, which may be responsible of its anti-invasive and anti-proliferative effects.

Pertussis is still endemic and the recently resurgence of the disease caused by Bordetella pertussis has been shown in many countries. The polymorphism of the virulence genes of B. pertussis and lack of any information about the allelic variation between the Iranian isolates promotes us to analysis of the genes encoded virulence factors including ptxS1, prn, fim3 and cya to understand the differences between circulating strains and vaccine strains. PCR and DNA sequencing of the genes was performed on 31 strains collected from patients in Iran from 2008-2010 after biochemical detection of the isolates. Sequencing results of prn, ptxS1, fim3 and cya genes indicated only one allele of the genes among the isolates including ptxS1A, prn2, fim3B and cyaA2, respectively. The alleles of the studied genes were different from vaccine strains (ptxS1E and B, prn2 and 6, fim3A and cyaA1 and 2) in Iran. Vaccination allows the spread of escape mutants and selects for the strains having different alleles of the genes from vaccine strains. The strains used for vaccine in our country are the same as some other countries in the world and our results of alleles of the studied genes were also the same. It is postulated that similar trend and schedules in vaccination strategies and similar coverage of vaccination and the same vaccines may lead to similar results from variation in the virulence factors involving in the immune response and variation is not related to geographic era.