Cells, Volume 12, Issue 3

Dynamic regulation of myosin filaments is a crucial factor in the ability of airway smooth muscle (ASM) to adapt to a wide length range. Increased stability or robustness of myosin filaments may play a role in the pathophysiology of asthmatic airways...

Monocytes play a vital role in the development of cardiovascular diseases. Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) is a major CVD risk factor, and T2DM-induced aberrant activation and enhanced migration of monocytes is a vital pathomechanism that leads to at...

Autotaxin (ATX) is an extracellular secretory enzyme (lysophospholipase D) that catalyzes the hydrolysis of lysophosphatidyl choline to lysophosphatidic acid (LPA). The ATX–LPA axis is a well-known pathological mediator of liver fibrosis, metas...

The TP53 gene is a major player in cancer formation, and it is considered the most important tumor suppressor gene. The p53 protein acts as a transcription factor, and it is involved in DNA repair, senescence, cell-cycle control, autophagy, and apopt...

Diabetic rat embryos have increased cortical neurogenesis and neuron maturation, and their offspring presented altered neuron polarity, lamination, and diminished neuron excitability. The FOXP2 overexpression results in higher cortical neurogenesis b...

In this Special Issue of Cells, entitled “Immunomodulation by Mesenchymal Stem Cells 2020”, you can find five excellent papers on the role of mesenchymal stem/stromal cells (MSCs) in immunomodulation, which also includes regenerative proc...

Background: Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) immunotherapy is the standard-of-care adjuvant therapy for non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer in patients at considerable risk of disease recurrence. Although its exact mechanism of action is unknown,...

Oncolytic ability to direct target and lyse tumor cells makes oncolytic virus therapy (OVT) a promising approach to treating cancer. Despite its therapeutic potential to stimulate anti-tumor immune responses, it also has immunosuppressive effects. Th...

Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common and aggressive type of brain tumor due to its elevated recurrence following treatments. This is mainly mediated by a subpopulation of cells with stemness traits termed glioblastoma stem-like cells (GSCs), which a...

Although elevated TGFβ2 levels appear to be a causative factor in glaucoma pathogenesis, little is known about how TGFβ2 expression is regulated in the trabecular meshwork (TM). Here, we investigated if activation of the cytokine regulator...

Intervertebral disc (IVD) degeneration is a major cause of low back pain. However, treatments directly approaching the etiology of IVD degeneration and discogenic pain are not yet established. We previously demonstrated that intradiscal implantation...

Nanoparticles (NPs) are the focus of research efforts that aim to develop successful drug delivery systems for the brain. Polypeptide nanocarriers are versatile platforms and combine high functionality with good biocompatibility and biodegradability....

Skeletal muscle is the most abundant tissue in the body and requires high levels of energy to function properly. Skeletal muscle allows voluntary movement and body posture, which require different types of fiber, innervation, energy, and metabolism....

Lens epithelial explants are comprised of lens epithelial cells cultured in vitro on their native basement membrane, the lens capsule. Biologists have used lens epithelial explants to study many different cellular processes including lens fiber cell...

Research into the functions of nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD) has intensified in recent years due to the insight that abnormally low levels of NAD are involved in many human pathologies including metabolic disorders, neurodegeneration, repro...

Autoreactive B cells play a key role in the initiation or aggravation of many systemic and tissue-specific autoimmune disorders [...]

Autophagy is a catabolic lysosomal-dependent pathway involved in the degradation of cellular materials, supplying precursor compounds and energy for macromolecule synthesis and metabolic needs [...]

Human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) hold the potential to solve the problem of the shortage of functional hepatocytes in clinical applications and drug development. However, a large number of usable hepatocytes derived from hESCs cannot be effectively...

Prothymosin alpha (ProTα) was discovered to be a necrosis inhibitor from the conditioned medium of a primary culture of rat cortical neurons under starved conditions. This protein carries out a neuronal cell-death-mode switch from necrosis to a...

Ectrodactyly-Ectodermal dysplasia-Clefting (EEC) syndrome is caused by heterozygous missense point mutations in the p63 gene, an important transcription factor during embryogenesis and for stem cell differentiation in stratified epithelia. Most of th...

Inflammation and oxidative and nitrosative stress are involved in the pathogenesis of proliferative retinopathies (PR). In PR, a loss of balance between pro-angiogenic and anti-angiogenic factors favors the secretion of vascular endothelial growth fa...

Caveolae-associated signaling toward mitochondria contributes to the cardioprotective mechanisms against ischemia-reperfusion (I/R) injury induced by ischemic postconditioning. In this work, we evaluated the role that the actin-cytoskeleton network e...

The outbreak of COVID-19 has positively impacted the NGS market recently. Targeted sequencing (TS) has become an important routine technique in both clinical and research settings, with advantages including high confidence and accuracy, a reasonable...

Although clinical trials on human neural stem cells (hNSCs) have already been implemented in the treatment of neurological diseases and they have demonstrated their therapeutic effects, many questions remain in the field of preclinical research regar...

In the cellular response to stresses, the tumor suppressor p53 is activated to maintain genomic integrity and fidelity. As a transcription factor, p53 exhibits rich dynamics to allow for discrimination of the type and intensity of stresses and to dir...

The short and long isoforms of FAIM (FAIM-S and FAIM-L) hold important functions in the central nervous system, and their expression levels are specifically enriched in the retina. We previously described that Faim knockout (KO) mice present structur...

Lynch syndrome (LS) is an inherited disorder in which affected individuals have a significantly higher-than-average risk of developing colorectal and non-colorectal cancers, often before the age of 50 years. In LS, mutations in DNA repair genes lead...

Aging is characterized by biological disarrangements that increase vulnerability to stressors, the development of chronic diseases (e [...]

We wished to understand the metabolic reprogramming underlying liver fibrosis progression in mice. Administration to male C57BL/6J mice of the hepatotoxins carbon tetrachloride (CCl4), thioacetamide (TAA), or a 60% high-fat diet, choline-deficient, a...

Mitochondrial activity and quality control are essential for neuronal homeostasis as neurons rely on glucose oxidative metabolism. The ketone body, D-β-hydroxybutyrate (D-BHB), is metabolized to acetyl-CoA in brain mitochondria and used as an en...

The scaffold protein IQGAP1 associates with over 150 interactors to influence multiple biological processes. The molecular mechanisms that underly spatial and temporal regulation of these interactions, which are crucial for proper cell functions, rem...

Quantum dots are nanoparticles (2–10 nm) that emit strong and tunable fluorescence. Quantum dots have been heavily used in high-demand commercialized products, research, and for medical purposes. Emerging concerns have demonstrated the negative...

Human babesiosis is an emerging tick-borne disease, caused by haemoprotozoa genus of Babesia. Cases of transfusion-transmitted and naturally acquired Babesia infection have been reported worldwide in recent years and causing a serious public health p...

Focused ultrasound (FUS) can be used to physiologically change or destroy tissue in a non-invasive way. A few commercial systems have clinical approval for the thermal ablation of solid tumors for the treatment of neurological diseases and palliative...

To reduce the risk of post-hepatectomy liver failure in patients with hepatic pathologies, it is necessary to develop an approach to express the intraoperative assessment of the liver’s regenerative potential. Traditional clinical methods do no...

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) serves as risk factor for the development of lung cancer and seems to have a prognostic impact after surgery for non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The aim was to investigate the impact of COPD and postop...

Recent evidence points to autophagy as an essential cellular requirement for achieving the mature structure, homeostasis, and transparency of the lens. Collective evidence from multiple laboratories using chick, mouse, primate, and human model system...

Transgender (TG) describes individuals whose gender identity differs from the social norms. TG people undergoing gender-affirming hormone therapy (HT) may be considered a sub-group of the population susceptible to environmental contaminants for their...

Rhododendron chrysanthum (Rhododendron chrysanthum Pall.), an alpine plant, has developed UV-B resistance mechanisms and has grown to be an important plant resource with the responsive capacity of UV-B stress. Our study uses acetylated proteomics and...

Primary liver cancer (PLC), consisting mainly of hepatocellular carcinoma and intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma, is one of the major causes of cancer-related mortality worldwide. The curative therapy for PLC is surgical resection and liver transplantat...

Mycobacterium tuberculosis (M. tb) is the causative agent of tuberculosis (TB) that leads to millions of deaths each year. Extensive evidence has explored the involvement of microRNAs (miRNAs) in M. tb infection. Limitedly, the concrete function of m...

CK1α (Casein kinase 1α) is a member of the casein kinase 1(CK1) family that is involved in diverse cellular processes, but its functions remain unclear in stem cell development. Freshwater planarians are capable of whole-body regeneration...

Chronic wounds represent a major therapeutic challenge. Lymphatic vessel function is impaired in chronic ulcers but the role of lymphangiogenesis in wound healing has remained unclear. We found that lymphatic vessels are largely absent from chronic h...

NO-stimulated guanylyl cyclase (SGC) is a hemoprotein that plays key roles in various physiological functions. SGC is a typical enzyme-linked receptor that combines the functions of a sensor for NO gas and cGMP generator. SGC possesses exclusive sele...

Allergy is a chronic inflammatory disease, and its incidence has increased worldwide in recent years. Thalidomide, which was initially used as an anti-emetic drug but was withdrawn due to its teratogenic effects, is now used to treat blood cancers. A...

Previously, we reported that an inverse agonist of estrogen-related receptor gamma (ERRγ), GSK5182, enhances sodium iodide (Na⁺/I⁻) symporter (NIS) function through mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinase signaling in anaplastic thyroid ca...

Aquaporins (AQPs) are selective, transmembrane proteins, which are primarily responsible for the transport of water and small molecules. They have been demonstrated to play a key role in the development and progression of cancer. Lung adenocarcinoma...

Inflammation is key to the pathogenesis of diabetic retinopathy (DR). This prospective study investigated alterations in inflammatory cytokines in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) in 41 people with type 1 diabetes (T1D), sub-grouped into mi...

The hallmark of HIV-1 infection is the rapid dysregulation of immune functions. Recent investigations for biomarkers of such dysregulation in people living with HIV (PLWH) reveal a strong correlation between viral rebound and immune activation with a...

The bZIP transcription factors (TFs) govern regulation of development, secondary metabolism, and various stress responses in filamentous fungi. In this work, we carried out genome-wide expression studies employing Illumina RNAseq to understand the ro...