Akram Siavoshi; Mahdieh Taghizadeh; Elahe Dookhe; Mehran Piran; Mahsa Saliani; Shahla Mohammad Ganji
Abstract
Epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC), as a challenging disease among women with poor prognosis and unclear molecular pathogenesis, each year is responsible for 140000 deaths globally. Recent progress in the field revealed the importance of proteins as key players of different biological ...
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Epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC), as a challenging disease among women with poor prognosis and unclear molecular pathogenesis, each year is responsible for 140000 deaths globally. Recent progress in the field revealed the importance of proteins as key players of different biological events. Considering the complicated protein interactions, taking a deeper look at protein-protein interactions (PPIs) could be considered as a superior strategy to unravel complex mechanisms encountered with regulatory cell signaling pathways of ovarian cancer. Hence, PPI network analysis was performed on differentially expressed genes (DEGs) of ovarian cancer to discover hub genes which have the potential to be introduced as biomarkers with clinical utility. A PPI network with 600 DEGs was constructed. Network topology analysis determined UBC, FN1, SPP1, ACTB, GAPDH, JUN, and RPL13A, with the highest Degree (K) and betweenness centrality (BC), as shortcuts of the network. KEGG pathway analysis showed that these genes are commonly enriched in ribosome and ECM-receptor interaction pathways. These pivotal hub genes, mainly UBC, FN1, RPL13A, SPP1, and JUN have been reported previously as potential prognostic biomarkers of different types of cancer. However, further experimental molecular studies and computational processes are required to confirm the function and association of the identified hub genes with epithelial ovarian cancer prognosis.
Azadeh Haghighitalab; Maryam M. Matin; Fatemeh Khakrah; Ahmad Asoodeh; Ahmad Reza Bahrami
Abstract
Despite the prominent therapeutic potentials of stem cells, their use in cell therapy has been challenged with some unreproducible and inconsistent outcomes in addition to the risk of rejection and tumorigenesis. Gaining novel insights to the importance of the conditioned medium, ...
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Despite the prominent therapeutic potentials of stem cells, their use in cell therapy has been challenged with some unreproducible and inconsistent outcomes in addition to the risk of rejection and tumorigenesis. Gaining novel insights to the importance of the conditioned medium, secretory factors and extracellular vesicles as the functional components of the cultured stem cells, suggested the idea of substituting the cells with their cell-free counterparts. Biological properties of these products are influenced by the cues received from their microenvironment. Hence, providing optimal and fully defined culture conditions is essential for their preparation. Fetal bovine serum (FBS), one of the most routine supplements of cell culture, is enriched by endogenous extracellular vesicles (EVs). These EVs will affect the yield, purity and functional features of the cell-free products. Here, we endeavored to examine and compare three different methods including ultrasonication, ultrafiltration and polymer-based precipitation, to deplete EVs from FBS. We chose easy to perform and fast methods with the capacity for high-throughput applications. Based on our observations, although all examined methods were able to deplete EVs from FBS to some extent, polymer-based precipitation could be considered as the method of choice with minimal consequences on the biological requirements of FBS to support cell growth and characteristics. Due to similarities between FBS and some other biological solutions, this strategy would be suitable for EV-depletion from other liquids with high concentrations of proteins and nutrients. Moreover, it could be applied for preparation of optimal culture conditions for nanoparticle applications.
