Background: Cancer metastasis is a major hurdle in cancer therapy and needs identification of novel targets for drug designing. Results: hnRNP-K is highly expressed in cancer cells and regulates extracellular matrix, cell motility, and angiogenesis pathways. Conclusion: hnRNP-K is a potential target for metastasis therapy. Significance: hnRNP-K expression level may serve as a marker of metastatic cancers, and hnRNP-K-inhibiting drugs could be candidate anti-cancer and anti-metastasis reagents.

Background: Mortalin/mtHsp70 is an essential stress chaperone frequently enriched in cancers. Results: Mortalin is present in the nucleus of cancer cells where it causes strong inactivation of tumor suppressor protein p53 and activation of telomerase and heterogeneous ribonucleoprotein K (hnRNP-K) proteins. Conclusion: Nuclear mortalin promotes carcinogenesis. Significance: This study is important for the development of mortalin-based anticancer treatments.

Ashwagandha is an important herb used in the Indian system of traditional home medicine, Ayurveda. Alcoholic extract (i-Extract) from its leaves and its component, withanone, were previously shown to possess anticancer activity. In the present study, we developed a combination of withanone and withaferin A, major withanolides in the i-Extract, that retained the selective cancer cell killing activity and found that it also has significant antimigratory, -invasive, and -angiogenic activities, in both in vitro and in vivo assays. Using bioinformatics and biochemical approaches, we demonstrate that these phytochemicals caused downregulation of migration-promoting proteins hnRNP-K, VEGF, and metalloproteases and hence are candidate natural drugs for metastatic cancer therapy. Mol Cancer Ther; 13(12); 2930-40. Ó2014 AACR.

These studies demonstrate that B7-H4 directly promotes malignant transformation of ovarian cancer cell line, and provides a potential therapeutic strategy for targeting B7-H4 to inhibit progression of human ovarian cancers.

c Sequence analysis of the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region was employed as the gold standard method for yeast identification in the China Hospital Invasive Fungal Surveillance Net (CHIF-NET). It has subsequently been found that matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-time of flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) is potentially a more practical approach for this purpose. In the present study, the performance of the Vitek MS v2.0 system for the identification of yeast isolates collected from patients with invasive fungal infections in the 2011 CHIF-NET was evaluated. A total of 1,243 isolates representing 31 yeast species were analyzed, and the identification results by the Vitek MS v2.0 system were compared to those obtained by ITS sequence analysis. By the Vitek MS v2.0 system, 96.7% (n ‫؍‬ 1,202) of the isolates were correctly assigned to the species level and 0.2% (n ‫؍‬ 2) of the isolates were identified to the genus level, while 2.4% (n ‫؍‬ 30) and 0.7% (n ‫؍‬ 9) of the isolates were unidentified and misidentified, respectively. After retesting of the unidentified and misidentified strains, 97.3% (n ‫؍‬ 1,209) of the isolates were correctly identified to the species level. Based on these results, a testing algorithm that combines the use of the Vitek MS system with selected supplementary ribosomal DNA (rDNA) sequencing was developed and validated for yeast identification purposes. By employing this algorithm, 99.7% (1,240/1,243) of the study isolates were accurately identified with the exception of two isolates of Candida fermentati and one isolate of Cryptococcus gattii. In conclusion, the proposed identification algorithm could be practically implemented in strategic programs of fungal infection surveillance.T he global antifungal surveillance programs have provided important global epidemiology and susceptibility data for invasive yeast infections (1-6). In July 2009, the multicenter nationwide China Hospital Invasive Fungal Surveillance Net (CHIF-NET) study was established, and since then it has provided important information on the epidemiology of fungal diseases in China (7). The importance of confirmatory identification in fungal surveillance programs has been highlighted by reports that the initial identifications by the participating laboratories may be inaccurate, particularly for isolates that are uncommon or have unusual biochemical or phenotypic profiles (7,8). Currently, sequencing-based methods are recognized as the gold standard for identifying yeast species (9). In the 2010 CHIF-NET surveillance study, all 814 isolates were confirmed by internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region sequencing in a central laboratory (7). However, the subsequent expansion of the CHIF-NET program has led to a dramatic increase in the numbers of both the participating laboratories and the referred isolates, precluding the universal application of the high-cost and labor-intensive sequence-based identification methods.Recently, matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization-time of flight (MALDI-TOF) mass...