Edited by Varda Rotter Keywords:Cancer associated fibroblasts microRNA Protein tyrosine phosphatase and tensin homologue Gastric cancer a b s t r a c t It is well established that the interaction between cancer cells and microenvironment has a critical role in tumor development, but the roles of miRNAs in this interaction are rarely known. Here, we have shown that miR-106b is up-regulated in cancer associated fibroblasts compared with normal fibroblasts established from patients with gastric cancer, the expression level of miR-106b is associated with poor prognosis of patients, and CAFs with down-regulated miR-106b could significantly inhibit gastric cancer cell migration and invasion by targeting PTEN. Taken together, these data suggest that miR-106b might be a novel candidate target for the treatment of gastric cancer.

No abstract

Mounting evidence indicates that alterations in the intestinal microbiota may be associated with neurological disorders such as multiple sclerosis (MS). MS is a putative autoimmune disease of the central nervous system. However, it has not been determined whether the intestinal microbiota and host immune status are altered in Chinese patients with stable MS. In our study, 22 Chinese patients with stable MS and 33 healthy controls were enrolled for fecal microbiota analysis and host immunity evaluation. The microbial diversity and composition, bacterial co-occurrence correlations, predictive functional profiles, and microbiota-cytokine correlations between the two groups were compared. We observed that while the overall structure of the fecal microbiota did not change significantly, the abundances of several key functional bacteria, primarily Faecalibacterium, decreased remarkably. Faecalibacterium and Granulicatella could be used to distinguish between patients with MS and healthy controls with an area under the curve of 0.832. PiCRUSt analysis revealed that genes associated with fructose, mannose, and fatty acid metabolism were significantly enriched in the MS microbiota. In addition, we also observed that the levels of several pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines and chemokines, such as IL-1ra, IL-8, IL-17, and TNF-α changed observably, and the abundances of key functional bacteria like butyrate producers correlated with the changes in the cytokine levels. Our present study indicated that altered composition of the fecal microbiota might play vital roles in the etiopathogenesis of MS by regulating host immunity, which suggests that microbiota-targeting patient-tailored early intervention techniques might serve as novel therapeutic approaches for MS.