Candida albicans is an opportunistic fungus that is part of the normal microflora commonly found in the human digestive tract and the normal mucosa or skin of healthy individuals. However, in immunocompromised individuals, it becomes a serious health concern and a threat to their lives and is ranked as the leading fungal infection in humans worldwide. As existing treatments for this infection a...

Staurosporine (stsp) is a kinase inhibitor which induces cornified envelope assembly and terminal differentiation in normal and neoplastic mouse keratinocytes. In the tumorigenic cell lines 308 and SP-1 experiments were performed to determine if this effect was due only to activation of transglutaminases (TGases) already residing within the cell, or whether stsp was capable of inducing a full p...

Background: Substantial progress has been recently achieved that direct lineage reprogramming induced by small molecule compounds was possible either in vitro or in vivo, which provided a promising cellular strategy for regenerative therapy. Method: A combination of an inhibitor of HDACs, valproic acid (V) and an inhibitor of TGF-β pathway, tranilast (T) were applied to identify the conversatio...

Both retinoids and IFNs are known to inhibit proliferation of many normal and transformed cells and to have an in vivo antitumor effect against a variety of cancers, including squamous cell carcinoma. Because the combination of IFNs and all-trans retinoic acid (RA) could improve their antitumor effectiveness (depending on the histological origin and state of differentiation of the cells), we co...

A hitherto unknown function for transglutaminase (TGase; R-glutaminyl-peptide: amine gamma-glutamyltransferase, EC 2.3.2.13) was found in the conversion of latent transforming growth factor-beta (LTGF-beta) to active TGF-beta by bovine aortic endothelial cells (BAECs). The cell-associated, plasmin-mediated activation of LTGF-beta to TGF-beta induced either by treatment of BAECs with retinoids o...

OBJECTIVE To assess the prognostic roles of BAP1, PBRM1, pS6, PTEN, TGase2, PD-L1, CA9, PSMA, and Ki-67 tissue biomarkers in localized renal cell carcinoma (RCC). METHODS Patients who underwent a nephrectomy during 1992-2015 and had a primary specimen of their kidney tumor were included. The nine tissue biomarkers were immunohistochemically stained on tissue microarrays of RCC, and the semi-q...

Transglutaminase 2 (TGase 2) is a Ca+2-dependent enzyme that catalyzes both intracellular and extracellular cross-linking reactions by transamidation of specific glutamine residues. TGase 2 is known to be involved in the membrane-mediated events required for glucose-stimulated insulin release from the pancreatic beta cells. Here we show that targeted disruption of TGase 2 impairs glucose-stimul...

Transglutaminases (TGases) are seven enzymes, cross-linking proteins by gamma-glutamil-epsilon-lysine bonds, four of which are expressed in the skin. A new member of the TGase family, TGase 5, has been identified recently, and in the present study we evaluated its role in keratinocyte differentiation in vitro. In addition to the previously described isoforms, full-length TGase 5 and Delta3 (del...

All-trans-retinoic acid (RA) plays a crucial role in survival and differentiation of neurons. For elucidating signaling mechanisms involved in RA-induced neuronal differentiation, we have selected SH-SY5Y cells, which are an established in vitro cell model for studying RA signaling. Here we report that RA-induced neuronal differentiation of SH-SY5Y cells is coupled with increased expression/act...

Homozygosity for Cst6 null alleles causes the phenotype of the ichq mouse, which is a model for human harlequin ichthyosis (OMIM 242500), a genetically heterogeneous group of keratinization disorders. Here we report evidence for the mechanism by which deficiency of the cysteine protease inhibitor cystatin M/E (the Cst6 gene product) leads to disturbed cornification, impaired barrier function an...