Novel Therapeutic and Preventive Approaches for Cancer

A special issue of Medicines (ISSN 2305-6320).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2019) | Viewed by 13336

Special Issue Editors

Department of Natural, Pharmacy and Health Sciences, Elizabeth City State University Campus of the University of North Carolina, Elizabeth City, NC 27909, USA
Interests: cancer apoptosis; ceramide; glioma; biomarker discovery; theranostics
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Department of Medicine, The University of Texas Health North East MD Anderson Cancer Center, 11937 US Hwy 271, Tyler, TX 75708, USA
Interests: cancer; mitochondria; biomarker; exosomes
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Tremendous advancements have been made to effectively combat various malignant diseases in the past few decades. Early detection and monitoring with a battery of biomarkers and targeted therapy with various molecular inhibitors are emerging continuously to increase our strength to continue our fight against cancer. On the other hand, various preventive measures such as HPV vaccination and mammographic imprinting have remarkably improved our ability to prevent or detect cancer early. Various mitochondria- and exosome-based therapeutic approaches in concert with next generation immunotherapy are also on the way to develop comprehensive measures to conquer this lethal disease. In this Special Issue, we would like to invite cutting-edge research covering the broad areas of preventive and therapeutic oncology.

Prof. Dr. Hirendra Nath Banerjee
Prof. Dr. Santanu Dasgupta
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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Keywords

  • cancer
  • prevention
  • therapy
  • vaccines
  • exosomes
  • mitochondria
  • miRNA
  • long non-coding RNA

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

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9 pages, 526 KiB  
Article
Cervical Cancer Prevention in Racially Disparate Rural Populations
by Patti Olusola, Kia Ousley, Harrison Ndetan, Karan P. Singh, Hirendra Nath Banerjee and Santanu Dasgupta
Medicines 2019, 6(3), 93; https://doi.org/10.3390/medicines6030093 - 04 Sep 2019
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2928
Abstract
Background: Undergoing a timely Pap smear, high-risk human papilloma virus (HPV)- and colposcopy-based testing can reduce HPV-associated cervical cancer (CC) development in women. However, in rural areas, women and minorities without insurance do not undergo periodic assessment and remain at greater risk of [...] Read more.
Background: Undergoing a timely Pap smear, high-risk human papilloma virus (HPV)- and colposcopy-based testing can reduce HPV-associated cervical cancer (CC) development in women. However, in rural areas, women and minorities without insurance do not undergo periodic assessment and remain at greater risk of HPV infection and CC. Methods: In this study, 173 women from rural East Texas with various ethnic backgrounds were examined thorough HPV/Pap-based testing and colposcopic assessment. Results: Of the 113 informative cases, 77% (87/113) were positive for high-risk HPV infection and 23% of subjects (26/113) were negative. Associations between HPV positivity with young age (p = 0.002), and a low number of pregnancy (p = 0.004) and births (p = 0.005) were evident. Women with long-term use of contraceptives (OR 1.93, 95% CI, 0.80–4.69) were associated with increased risk of HPV infection. African-American women had a higher risk of abnormal Pap outcome compared to Caucasians (OR 5.31, 95% CI, 0.67–42.0). HPV seemed to be a predictor of abnormal Pap outcome (OR 1.77, 95% CI, 0.48–6.44) in these subjects. Unmarried/widowed/divorced women had an increased abnormal Pap test outcome compared to married women or women living with a partner (p = 0.01), with over 278% increased odds (OR 3.78 at 95% CI, 1.29–11.10). Insured women undergoing periodic checkups were detected early with high-risk HPV infection and abnormal Pap test/colposcopic outcome. Conclusions: Comprehensive and timely screening of uninsured women and minorities in rural East Texas are warranted, which could potentially prevent the onset of HPV-associated CC. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Novel Therapeutic and Preventive Approaches for Cancer)
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13 pages, 2837 KiB  
Article
A Visualization Tool for Cryo-EM Protein Validation with an Unsupervised Machine Learning Model in Chimera Platform
by Lin Chen, Brandon Baker, Eduardo Santos, Michell Sheep and Darius Daftarian
Medicines 2019, 6(3), 86; https://doi.org/10.3390/medicines6030086 - 06 Aug 2019
Viewed by 4534
Abstract
Background: Cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) has become a major technique for protein structure determination. However, due to the low quality of cryo-EM density maps, many protein structures derived from cryo-EM contain outliers introduced during the modeling process. The current protein model validation system lacks [...] Read more.
Background: Cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) has become a major technique for protein structure determination. However, due to the low quality of cryo-EM density maps, many protein structures derived from cryo-EM contain outliers introduced during the modeling process. The current protein model validation system lacks identification features for cryo-EM proteins making it not enough to identify outliers in cryo-EM proteins. Methods: This study introduces an efficient unsupervised outlier detection model for validating protein models built from cryo-EM technique. The current model uses a high-resolution X-ray dataset (<1.5 Å) as the reference dataset. The distal block distance, side-chain length, phi, psi, and first chi angle of the residues in the reference dataset are collected and saved as a database of the histogram-based outlier score (HBOS). The HBOS value of the residues in target cryo-EM proteins can be read from this HBOS database. Results: Protein residues with a HBOS value greater than ten are labeled as outliers by default. Four datasets containing proteins derived from cryo-EM density maps were tested with this probabilistic anomaly detection model. Conclusions: According to the proposed model, a visualization assistant tool was designed for Chimera, a protein visualization platform. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Novel Therapeutic and Preventive Approaches for Cancer)
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13 pages, 815 KiB  
Review
Synthetic Lethality in Lung Cancer—From the Perspective of Cancer Genomics
by Iwao Shimomura, Yusuke Yamamoto and Takahiro Ochiya
Medicines 2019, 6(1), 38; https://doi.org/10.3390/medicines6010038 - 12 Mar 2019
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 5405
Abstract
Cancer is a genetic disease, and this concept is now widely exploited by both scientists and clinicians to develop new genotype-selective anticancer therapeutics. Although the quest of cancer genomics is in its dawn, recognition of the widespread applicability of genetic interactions with biological [...] Read more.
Cancer is a genetic disease, and this concept is now widely exploited by both scientists and clinicians to develop new genotype-selective anticancer therapeutics. Although the quest of cancer genomics is in its dawn, recognition of the widespread applicability of genetic interactions with biological processes of tumorigenesis is propelling research throughout academic fields. Lung cancer is the most common cause of cancer death worldwide, with an estimated 1.6 million deaths each year. Despite the development of targeted therapies that inhibit oncogenic mutations of lung cancer cases, continued research into new therapeutic approaches is required for untreatable lung cancer patients, and the development of therapeutic modalities has proven elusive. The “synthetic lethal” approach holds the promise of delivering a therapeutic regimen that preferentially targets malignant cells while sparing normal cells. We highlight the potential challenges in synthetic lethal anticancer therapeutics that target untreatable genetic alterations in lung cancer. We also discuss both challenges and opportunities regarding the application of new synthetic lethal interactions in lung cancer. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Novel Therapeutic and Preventive Approaches for Cancer)
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