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Obesity is considered one of the risk factors for many cancers. Serum leptin levels are often elevated in obese people. Leptin has been reported to act as a mitogenic agent and promote renal cancer cell proliferation, whereas the detailed mechanisms still remain to be elucidated. The purpose of this study is to investigate the proliferation and mobility effects in leptin-treated Caki-2 renal cell carcinoma and analyze the alterations of leptin-inducible STAT3 pathways and mitogenic signaling ERK pathways. Our results indicate the constitutive expression of leptin receptor could not be upregulated upon the stimulation of leptin in Caki-2 cells. Leptin increases the proliferation and mobility capabilities of Caki-2 cells via upregulating the expression of both phosphor-ERK and phosphor-STAT3 and these two pathways could be partially abolished by inhibition of the activation of JAK-STAT3 and completely abrogated by inhibition of ERK1/2 pathways. Our results also suggest that mitogenic actions of leptin are not the consequence of altered its receptor expression; whereas the cellular proliferation appears to be working through the cross-talking of JAK-STAT3 and ERK1/2 pathways in renal cell carcinoma caki-2 cells.

In November 2017, a severe infectious disease that devastated the major goose-producing regions in China was found to be caused by a novel goose astrovirus ( N-AstV ). The objective of this study was to develop a quantitative loop-mediated isothermal amplification ( qLAMP ) assay for the rapid diagnosis of N-AstV characterized with gout, hemorrhage, and swellings of the kidneys. A set of 4 specific primers, 2 inner and 2 outer primers, targeting the ORF1a gene of N-AstV were designed for the assay which could be completed within 60 min at 65°C in a water bath or on a real-time PCR instrument for quantitative analysis. The qLAMP assay showed a high sensitivity with a detection limit of 1 × 10 1 copies of the target DNA/μL. There were no cross-reactions with other viruses, and the reproducibility of the assay was confirmed in intrasensitivity and intersensitivity assay tests with variability ranging from 0.61 to 2.21%. The results indicated that the qLAMP assay for N-AstV was a simple, accurate, rapid, sensitive, and specific, especially useful for field detection.