MicroRNA‐450b‐3p inhibits cell growth by targeting phosphoglycerate kinase 1 in hepatocellular carcinoma

Protein kinase B (Akt), similar to many other protein kinases, is at the crossroads of cell death and survival, playing a pivotal role in multiple interconnected cell signaling mechanisms implicated in cell metabolism, growth and division, apoptosis suppression and angiogenesis. Akt protein kinase displays important metabolic effects, among which are glucose uptake in muscle and fat cells or the suppression of neuronal cell death. Disruptions in the Akt-regulated pathways are associated with cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular and neurological diseases. The regulation of the Akt signaling pathway renders Akt a valuable therapeutic target. The discovery process of Akt inhibitors using various strategies has led to the identification of inhibitors with great selectivity, low side-effects and toxicity. The usefulness of Akt emerges beyond cancer therapy and extends to other major diseases, such as diabetes, heart diseases, or neurodegeneration. This review presents key features of Akt structure and functions, and presents the progress of Akt inhibitors in regards to drug development, and their preclinical and clinical activity in regards to therapeutic efficacy and safety for patients. Show more

The current "gold-standard" for Parkinson's disease (PD) diagnosis is based primarily on subjective clinical rating scales related with motor features. Molecular biomarkers that are objective and quantifiable remain attractive as clinical tools to detect PD prior to its motor onsets. Here, we aimed to identify, develop, and validate plasma-based circulating microRNA (miRNAs) as biomarkers for PD. Global miRNA expressions were acquired from a discovery set of 32 PD/32 controls using microarrays. k-Top Scoring Pairs (k-TSP) algorithm and significance analysis of microarrays (SAM) were applied to obtain comprehensive panels of PD-predictive biomarkers. TaqMan miRNA-specific real-time PCR assays were performed to validate the microarray data and to evaluate the biomarker performance using a new replication set of 42 PD/30 controls. Data was analyzed in a paired PD-control fashion. The validation set was composed of 30 PD, 5 progressive supranuclear palsy, and 4 multiple system atrophy samples from a new clinical site. We identified 9 pairs of PD-predictive classifiers using k-TSP analysis and 13 most differentially-expressed miRNAs by SAM. A combination of both data sets produced a panel of PD-predictive biomarkers: k-TSP1 (miR-1826/miR-450b-3p), miR-626, and miR-505, and achieved the highest predictive power of 91% sensitivity, 100% specificity, 100% positive predicted value, and 88% negative predicted value in the replication set. However, low predictive values were shown in the validation set. This proof-of-concept study demonstrates the feasibility of using plasma-based circulating miRNAs as biomarkers for neurodegenerative disorders such as PD and shows the challenges of molecular biomarker research using samples from multiple clinical sites. Show more