Biomolecules, Volume 12, Issue 2

Over the past two decades, significant advances have been made in the field of regenerative medicine. However, despite being of the utmost clinical urgency, there remains a paucity of therapeutic strategies for conditions with substantial neurodegene...

Background: HAVcR-1 has been linked to cancer aetiology and may regulate junctional complexes, with its role in prostate cancer still unexplored. This study aims to investigate the expression of HAVcR-1 in prostate cancer samples and the exploration...

Aortic aneurysms and dissections are life-threatening conditions that have a high risk for lethal bleeding and organ malperfusion. Many studies have investigated the molecular basis of these diseases using mouse models. In mice, ex vivo, in situ, and...

The functions of the complement system to both innate and adaptive immunity through opsonization, cell lysis, and inflammatory activities are well known. In contrast, the role of complement in the central nervous system (CNS) which extends beyond imm...

In a previous study, we reported the alterations of primary antioxidant enzymes and decreased citrate synthase (CS) activities in different grades of human astrocytoma tissues. Here, we further investigated coenzyme Q₁₀ (CoQ₁₀) levels and protein lev...

Pancreatic islet β-cells exhibit tremendous plasticity for secretory adaptations that coordinate insulin production and release with nutritional demands. This essential feature of the β-cell can allow for compensatory changes that increase...

Left ventricular assist devices (LVADs) have been representing a cornerstone therapy for patients with end-stage heart failure during the last decades. However, their use induces several pathophysiological modifications which are partially responsibl...

Mitochondrial defects in motor neurons are pathological hallmarks of ALS, a neuromuscular disease with no effective treatment. Studies have shown that butyrate, a natural gut-bacteria product, alleviates the disease progression of ALS mice overexpres...

microRNAs are small non-coding RNAs that play a key role in regulating gene expression. These molecules exert their function through sequence complementarity with microRNA responsive elements and are typically located in the 3′ untranslated reg...

Neuraminidase (NA), as an important protein of influenza virus, represents a promising target for the development of new antiviral agents for the treatment and prevention of influenza A and B. Bacterial host strain Escherichia coli BL21 (DE3)pLysS co...

Dehydrins (DHNs) belong to the LEA (late embryogenesis abundant) family group II, that comprise four conserved motifs (the Y-, S-, F-, and K-segments) and are known to play a multifunctional role in plant stress tolerance. Based on the presence and o...

Progress in developing disease-modifying therapies in Parkinson’s disease (PD) can only be achieved through reliable objective markers that help to identify subjects at risk. This includes an early and accurate diagnosis as well as continuous m...

Schizophrenia (SCZ) is a polygenic severe mental illness. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have detected genomic variants associated with this psychiatric disorder and pathway analyses have indicated immune system and dopamine signaling as core...

Pantothenate kinase-associated neurodegeneration (PKAN) is a progressive neurodegenerative disease caused by mutations in the pantothenate kinase 2 (PANK2) gene and associated with iron deposition in basal ganglia. Pantothenate kinase isoforms cataly...

Poly lactic-co-glycolic acid (PLGA) particles safely and effectively deliver pharmaceutical ingredients, with many applications approved for clinical use in humans. In fishes, PLGA particles are being considered as carriers of therapeutic drugs and v...

A transcription factor p53 is activated upon cellular exposure to endogenous and exogenous stresses, triggering either homeostatic correction or cell death. Depending on the stress level, often measurable as DNA damage, the dual outcome is supported...

The biology of vitamin D3 is well defined, as are the effects of its active metabolites on various cells, including mesenchymal stromal/stem cells (MSCs). However, the biological potential of its precursor, cholecalciferol (VD3), has not been suffici...

Synucleinopathies are a group of neurodegenerative diseases, characterized by the abnormal accumulation of the protein alpha-synuclein (aSyn). aSyn is an intrinsically disordered protein that can adopt different aggregation states, some of which may...

Cellular inhibitor of apoptosis 1 (cIAP1) is a cell signaling regulator of the IAP family. Through its E3-ubiquitine ligase activity, it has the ability to activate intracellular signaling pathways, modify signal transduction pathways by changing pro...

Protein tyrosine phosphatases (PTPs), along with protein tyrosine kinases, control signaling pathways involved in cell growth, metabolism, differentiation, proliferation, and survival. Several PTPs, such as PTPN1, PTPN2, PTPN9, PTPN11, PTPRS, and DUS...

Pancreatic Ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), the most common malignancy of the pancreas, is an aggressive and lethal form of cancer with a very high mortality rate. High heterogeneity, asymptomatic initial stages and a lack of specific diagnostic markers...

High Mobility Group (HMG) proteins are today the focus of interest due to their participation in human degenerative diseases and inflammatory responses [...]

CP4-EPSPS (Agrobacterium sp. strain CP4 5-enolpyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate synthase) protein showed remarkable thermostability and was highly resistant to proteases, such as trypsin. In order to eliminate the pollution of CP4-EPSPS from the accumulat...

Sickle leg ulcers (SLU) are malleoli lesions with exuberant hemolytic pathophysiology. The microRNAs are potential genetic biomarkers for several pathologies. Thereby, we aimed to assess the expression of circulating miR-199a-5p, miR-144, and miR-126...

Bone-marrow-derived stromal cells (BMSCs) have emerged as promising therapeutic option for the treatment of osteoarthritis (OA) due to their tissue regenerative and anti-inflammatory features. BMSCs’ clinical potential is mainly ascribed to the...

Carfilzomib is a last generation proteasome inhibitor (PI) with proven clinical efficacy in the treatment of relapsed/refractory multiple myeloma. This drug is considered to be extremely specific in inhibiting the chymotrypsin-like activity of the 20...

G-quadruplexes (GQs) are secondary nucleic acid structures that play regulatory roles in various cellular processes. G-quadruplex-forming sequences present within the 5′ UTR of mRNAs can function not only as repressors of translation but also a...

Nonadjacent immune cells communicate through a complex network of tunneling nanotubes (TNTs). TNTs can be hijacked by HIV-1, allowing it to spread between connected cells. Dendritic cells (DCs) are among the first cells to encounter HIV-1 at mucosal...

Despite the obvious differences in the pathophysiology of distinct neuropsychiatric diseases or neurodegenerative disorders, some of them share some general but pivotal mechanisms, one of which is the disruption of excitation/inhibition balance. Such...

Nav1.5 is one of the nine voltage-gated sodium channel-alpha subunit (VGSC-α) family members. The Nav1.5 channel typically carries an inward sodium ion current that depolarises the membrane potential during the upstroke of the cardiac action po...

Concerning human and environmental health, safe alternatives to synthetic pesticides are urgently needed. Many of the currently used synthetic pesticides are not authorized for application in organic agriculture. In addition, the developed resistance...

Aberrant activation of the Wnt pathway is emerging as a frequent event during prostate cancer that can facilitate tumor formation, progression, and therapeutic resistance. Recent discoveries indicate that targeting the Wnt pathway to treat prostate c...

Protein-based carriers are promising vehicles for the intracellular delivery of therapeutics. In this study, we designed and studied adenovirus protein fiber constructs with potential applications as carriers for the delivery of protein and nanoparti...

Several studies have been published introducing Drosophila melanogaster as a research model to investigate the effects of high-calorie diets on metabolic dysfunctions. However, differences between the use of high-sugar diets (HSD) and high-fat diets...

Bacterial biofilms represent multicellular communities embedded in a matrix of extracellular polymeric substances, conveying increased resistance against environmental stress factors but also antibiotics. They are shaped by secreted enzymes such as p...

Prospective, double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled studies are considered to provide the highest quality of interventional evidence. This meta-analysis summarizes the frequencies of adverse events according to the Medical Dictionary for Regula...

The study of the cancer secretome is gaining even more importance in cancers such as pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), whose lack of recognizable symptoms and early detection assays make this type of cancer highly lethal. The wild-type p53 pro...

Ubiquitylation and ISGylation are protein post-translational modifications (PTMs) and two of the main events involved in the activation of pattern recognition receptor (PRRs) signals allowing the host defense response to viruses. As with similar viru...

Periodontal ligament (PDL) cells play a pivotal role in periodontal and bone homeostasis and have promising potential for regenerative medicine and tissue engineering. There is compelling evidence that long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) are differentiall...

Chemerin, a novel adipokine, is a potent chemoattractant molecule with antimicrobial properties, implicated in immune responses. Our aim was to investigate circulating chemerin and its kinetics, early in sepsis in critically ill patients and its asso...

Allelochemicals are considered an environment-friendly and promising alternative for weed management, although much effort is still needed for understanding their mode of action and then promoting their use in plant allelopathy management practices....

Doxorubicin (DOX) is an effective chemotherapeutic agent that plays an unparalleled role in cancer treatment. However, its serious dose-dependent cardiotoxicity, which eventually contributes to irreversible heart failure, has greatly limited the wide...

The onset of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) as a pandemic infection, has led to increasing insights on its pathophysiology and clinical features being revealed, such as a noticeable kidney involvement. In this study, we describe the histopathological...

Cancer metastasis is the leading cause of cancer-related mortality and the process of the epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is crucial for cancer metastasis. Both partial and complete EMT have been reported to influence the metabolic plastic...

Rigorous peer-reviews are the basis of high-quality academic publishing [...]

Structurally similar catalytic subunits A of ricin (RTA) and viscumin (MLA) exhibit cytotoxic activity through ribosome inactivation. Ricin is more cytotoxic than viscumin, although the molecular mechanisms behind this difference are still poorly und...

The orexigenic hormone ghrelin increases food intake and promotes obesity through its receptor, growth hormone secretagogue receptor (GHS-R). We previously reported two neuron-specific GHS-R knockout mouse lines, namely pan-neuronal deletion by Syn1-...

Dehydrins are intrinsically disordered proteins composed of several well conserved sequence motifs known as the Y-, S-, F-, and K-segments, the latter of which is a defining feature of all dehydrins. These segments are interspersed by regions of low...

Immune checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) such as PD1/PD-L1 blockers are an established treatment for many solid cancers. There are currently no approved ICIs for sarcomas, but satisfactory results have been seen in some patients with disseminated disease...

The JAK2V617F variant constitutes a genetic alteration of higher frequency in BCR/ABL1 negative chronic myeloproliferative neoplasms, which is caused by a substitution of a G ˃ T at position 1849 and results in the substitution of valine with ph...