Aberrant p16 promoter hypermethylation in bronchial mucosae as a biomarker for the early detection of lung cancer

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer related death in the world and its mortality could be greatly reduced by diagnosis and treatment in its early stages. Effective tools for the early detection of lung cancer and its high risk factors remain a major challenge. Biomarkers that detect lung cancer in its early stages or identify its pretumour lesions, enabling early therapeutic intervention, would be invaluable to improve its dismal prognosis.

Over-expressing root-specific β-amyrin synthase gene increases glycyrrhizic acid content in hairy roots of glycyrrhiza uralensis

Objsective: Glycyrrhizia uralensis, one of the most widely-used traditional Chinese medicines, is mainly cropped in China. However, many cultivars are less in glycyrrhizic acid than Chinese Pharmacopoeia requires. In this paper, we improved glycyrrhizic acid by regulating β-amyrin synthase gene(GuBAS).Methods: Tobacco root-specific promoter TobRB7 and Gu BAS c DNA were obtained and combined with linearized pCAMBIA1305.1 to construct root-specific plant expression vector which was later transformed into Agrobacterium rhizogenes ACCC10060 by electrotransformation. The cotyledons and hypocotyls of G.uralensis were infected by the recombinant A. rhizogenes ACCC10060 to induce hairy roots. The GA content was quantified by HPLC.Results: The PCR and sequencing results both showed that three transgenic hairy root lines were obtained. The copy number of Gu BAS in these transgenic hairy roots was intended by q RT-PCR to be 3, 7,and 4. GA was detected by HPLC, and the results showed that GA was present in the three transgenic hairy roots, while absent in wild hairy roots.Conclusion: Over-expressing Gu BAS root-specifically in hairy roots of G. uralensis enhanced GA accumulation.

Quantification of plasma DNA as a screening tool for lung cancer

Background Recent studies suggest that circulating DNA may be a potential tumor marker for lung cancer, but most of these studies are conducted between healthy controls and lung cancer patients, with few or no benign lung disease patients included. The objective of this study was to evaluate the performance of plasma DNA quantification in discriminating lung cancer from the healthy and benign lung disease.Methods Plasma DNA was extracted with a QIAamp DNA Blood Midi kit and quantified by a PicoGreen dsDNA quantitation kit in 44 healthy individuals, 36 benign lung disease patients and 67 lung cancer patients. Discrimination power was evaluated by the receiver operating characteristic curve. Results Plasma DNA values were significantly increased in lung cancer patients, especially in those with metastases, and in benign lung disease patients compared with that in the healthy individuals (P<0.001, respectively). The values in lung cancer patients were significantly increased compared with that in the benign lung disease patients (P<0.001). The area under the curve was 0.96 [95% confidence interval (CI) 0.92-0.99] for the healthy versus lung cancer, 0.73 (95% CI 0.64-0.83) for lung cancer versus benign lung disease, and 0.86 (95% CI 0.80-0.91) for lung cancer versus the healthy and benign lung disease.Conclusions Plasma DNA quantification has a strong power to discriminate lung cancer from the healthy and from the healthy and benign lung disease, less power to discriminate lung cancer from benign lung disease. Plasma DNA quantification may be useful as a screening tool for lung cancer.