Thematic Trends in Complementary and Alternative Medicine Applied in Cancer-Related Symptoms

Purpose： The main goal of this study is to discover the scientific evolution of Cancer-Related Symptoms in Complementary and Alternative Medicine research area, analyzing the articles indexed in the Web of Science database from 1980 to 2013.Design/Methodology/Approach： A co-word science mapping analysis is performed under a longitudinal framework（1980 to 2013）. The documental corpus is divided into two subperiods,1980–2008 and 2009–2013. Thus, the performance and impact rates, and conceptual evolution of the research field are shown.Findings： According to the results, the co-word analysis allows us to identify 12 main thematic areas in this emerging research field： anxiety, survivors and palliative care,meditation, treatment, symptoms and cancer types, postmenopause, cancer pain, low back pain, herbal medicine, children, depression and insomnia, inflammation mediators, and lymphedema. The different research lines are identified according to the main thematic areas,centered fundamentally on anxiety and suffering prevention. The scientific community can use this information to identify where the interest is focused and make decisions in different ways.Research limitation： Several limitations can be addressed： 1） some of the Complementary and Alternative Medicine therapies may not have been included; 2） only the documents indexed in Web of Science are analyzed; and 3） the thematic areas detected could change if another dataset was considered.Practical implications： The results obtained in the present study could be considered as an evidence-based framework in which future studies could be built.Originality/value： Currently, there are no studies that show the thematic evolution of this research area.

中草药对治疗癌症恶病质动物模型有效性的系统性回顾（英文）

本综述总结利用中草药治疗癌症恶病质的临床前研究及其潜在的机制,是首个针对中草药治疗癌症恶病质动物模型成效进行系统性回顾评价的研究。本文通过检索PubMed、EMBASE、Allied and Complementary Medicine Database以及Web of Science四大代表性的资料库(检索时间至2016年12月),就中草药治疗癌症恶病质的随机对照动物试验进行系统性回顾分析,并采用CAMARADE评分清单进行质量评价。分析结果显示:在十四项中草药及其化合物中,除了姜黄素外其他如黄连、黄连素、病得灵、清暑益气汤、黄芩、补中益气汤、六君子汤、橙皮苷、苍术呋喃烃、十全大补汤、小柴胡汤、知母及黄柏等都已被证实可以通过抗炎、调节神经内分泌途径、调节泛素蛋白酶体系统或蛋白质合成来改善癌症恶病质的症状。因此,利用中草药治疗癌症恶病质是一种有效的方法。然而该结论尚需要有更详细的分子机制和活性化合物的实验研究验证。

Intriguing Origins of Protein Lysine Methylation:Influencing Cell Function Through Dynamic Methylation

Introduction“There is a kink(shoulder)on[the]Lys peak...”These words scribed in Richard P.Ambler’s laboratory notebook marked the discovery of protein methylation and a segue into a new field of scientific research[1].Initially,through ion-exchange chromatography and two-dimensional paper chromatography of the hydrolysate of Salmonella typhimurium flagellin,this“kink”was interpreted as a“new amino acid”,the e-Nmethyl-lysine(NML).This discovery,bolstered by a subsequent examination of purified NML,was the first glimpse of protein methylation in living cells[1].

Disease Biomarkers for Precision Medicine:Challenges and Future Opportunities

Most of the human diseases are complex diseases,which could be caused by many genetic pathways.This means that for a given phenotype(i.e.,a complex disease),there are multiple potential genes which could be genomically or epigenetically changed(i.e.,mutations,copy number variations,epigenetic modifications,and so on).Therefore,it is understandable that different individuals who share the same phenotype/diseases may have different causal genes and thus,may have different drug targets.For example,mutated genes are rarely common between the cancer patients of the same cancer type[1];furthermore,for a given drug,only 10%-30% of the patients

Exosome secretion from hypoxic cancer cells reshapes the tumor microenvironment and mediates drug resistance

Hypoxia is a common phenomenon in solid tumors as the poorly organized tumor vasculature cannot fulfill the increasing oxygen demand of rapidly expanding tumors.Under hypoxia,tumor cells reshape their microenvironment to sustain survival,promote metastasis,and develop resistance to therapy.Exosomes are extracellular vesicles secreted by most eukaryotic cells,including tumor cells.They are enriched with a selective collection of nucleic acids and proteins from the originating cells to mediate cell-to-cell communication.Accumulating evidence suggests that exosomes derived from tumor cells play critical roles in modulating the tumor microenvironment(TME).Hypoxia is known to stimulate the secretion of exosomes from tumor cells,thereby promoting intercellular communication of hypoxic tumors with the surrounding stromal tissues.Exosome-mediated signaling pathways under hypoxic conditions have been reported to cause angiogenesis,invasion,metastasis,drug resistance,and immune escape.Recently,the programmed cell death ligand-1(PD-L1)has been reported to reside as a transmembrane protein in tumor exosomes.Exosomal PD-L1 was shown to suppress T cell effector function in the TME and cause drug resistance to immune checkpoint therapy.This review provides an update about the pivotal role of tumor-derived exosomes in drug resistance to chemotherapy and immunotherapy,particularly under hypoxic conditions.Emerging strategies that target the exosomes in the hypoxic TME to enhance the antitumor efficacy are discussed.

MicroRNAs: Mechanisms, Functions and Progress

In 1993 when Ambros and co-workers [1] discovered that a mysterious Caenorhabditis elegans gene, lin-4, does not encode a protein, but acts in the form of a small RNA and represses the expression of its target gene, lin-14, through base-pairing with its 3＇ untranslated region （3tUTR）, nobody would imagine that 20 years later, this category of small RNAs - now widely known as microR- NAs （or miRNAs）, has ～2000 known members in the human genome （and counting）, and that miRNA-mediated gene regulation is deeply involved in virtually all important biological processes in animals and plants.