VAV2 drives EGFR-mediated Rac1 responses in prostate cancer

2 months 2 weeks ago
Martin J Baker
The small G-protein Rac1 is a central player in cancer progression and metastatic dissemination. Rac1 has been established as a bona fide effector of receptor tyrosine kinases, acting as a signaling node for motility, invasiveness, mitogenesis, and gene expression. Previous studies demonstrated that Rac1 is hyperactivated in aggressive cellular models of prostate cancer. Here, we show that CRISPR/Cas9-based knockout of Rac1 leads to impaired prostate cancer cell proliferation and migration....

Why the growth of arboviral diseases necessitates a new generation of global risk maps and future projections

2 months 2 weeks ago
Oliver J Brady
Global risk maps are an important tool for assessing the global threat of mosquito and tick-transmitted arboviral diseases. Public health officials increasingly rely on risk maps to understand the drivers of transmission, forecast spread, identify gaps in surveillance, estimate disease burden, and target and evaluate the impact of interventions. Here, we describe how current approaches to mapping arboviral diseases have become unnecessarily siloed, ignoring the strengths and weaknesses of...

Developing a physiologically relevant cell model of ferroptosis in cardiomyocytes

2 months 2 weeks ago
Jorge Garcia-Baez
Excessive intracellular labile iron levels exacerbate reactive oxygen species (ROS) production through the Fenton reaction, leading to lipid peroxidation and ferroptotic cell death. Ferroptosis is commonly induced experimentally using chemical inhibitors such as RSL3 (a GPX4 inhibitor) or erastin (an inhibitor of the cystine-glutamate exchanger, Xc-) or by cysteine deprivation. However, these methods often fail to replicate the physiological complexity of ferroptosis and are associated with...

Lipotoxicity Induces Beta Cell Small Extracellular Vesicle-mediated β-cell Dysfunction in Male Mice

2 months 2 weeks ago
Abhishek Roy
Chronically elevated circulating excess free fatty acids (i.e. lipotoxicity) is a pathological process implicated in several metabolic disorders, including obesity-driven Type 2 diabetes (T2D). Lipotoxicity exerts detrimental effects on pancreatic islet β-cells by reducing glucose-stimulated insulin secretion (GSIS), altering β-cell transcriptional identity, and promoting apoptosis. While β-cell-derived small extracellular vesicles (sEV) have been shown to contribute to β-cell failure in T2D,...