Transforming growth factor-B1 (TGF-β1 )and its coreceptor endoglin (ENG) have been shown to contribute to hepatocellular tumor development and malignant progression. Our aim was to evaluate the serum expression levels of ENG/ TGF-β1 mRNAs and risk of hepatocellular carcinoma in cirrhotic Egyptian patients. Our study included 77 subjects. Real time polymerase chain reaction was used to evaluate ...

A key event in chronic allergic asthma is the TGF-β-induced activation of fibroblasts into α-SMA-positive myofibroblasts which synthesize type-I collagen. In the present study we investigated the effect of the anti-fibrotic molecule BMP-7 in asthma. Balb/c mice were immunized i.p. with ovalbumin in alum and challenged every 2 days with ovalbumin aerosol (two or six challenges for acute and chro...

BACKGROUND Transforming growth factor-β1 (TGF-β1) has a critical role in breast cancer initiation and progression. OBJECTIVES We have investigated the possible differences in two promoter polymorphisms (-509C/T and -800G/A) of TGF-β1 gene between breast cancer cases and controls. PATIENTS AND METHODS A total of 100 patients with confirmed breast cancer and 100 subjects without breast cancer...

β1-Adrenergic receptors (β1-ARs) are key targets of sympathetic nervous system activity and play a major role in the beat-to-beat regulation of cardiac chronotropy and inotropy. We employed a β1-AR gene knockout model to test the hypothesis that β1-AR function is critical for maintenance of resting heart rate and baroreflex responsiveness and, on the basis of its important role in regulating ch...

FUT1 is a key rate-limiting enzyme in the synthesis of Lewis y, a membrane-associated carbohydrate antigen. The aberrant upregulation of FUT1 and Lewis y antigen is related to proliferation, invasion and prognosis in malignant epithelial tumors. A c-Fos/activator protein-1 (AP-1) binding site was found in the FUT1 promoter. However, the mechanisms of transcriptional regulation of FUT1 remain po...

TGF-β1-induced epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) has been proved to be associated with metastasis of breast cancer cells. We attempted to detect a novel mechanism that microRNAs mediated the TGF-β1-induced EMT in the process of breast cancer metastasis. Here we reported that the expression of miR-23a was higher in breast cancer cells with high metastasis ability and patients with lymph no...

Metabolically stressed kidney is in part characterized by infiltrating macrophages and macrophage-derived TGF-β1 that promote the synthesis of various ECM molecules. TGF-β1 strongly enhances the expression of the gene TGFBI that encodes a cell-adhesion class, proapoptotic ECM protein called BIGH3. We hypothesized that in a diabetic environment a relationship between infiltrating macrophages, ma...

background: normal tissue toxicity continues to remain as a major challenge for radiation oncologists for delivering the total dose to the tumour cells in cancer patients. cellular, molecular and plasma based early biomarkers to predict the overreactions and non-overreactions of normal tissue toxicity before the initiation of radiotherapy can be valuable for personalised treatment. the aim of t...

Tumor cells commonly adapt survival strategies by downregulation or mutational inactivation of TGF-β receptors thereby reversing TGF-β1-mediated growth arrest. However, TGF-β1-triggered signaling also has a protumor effect through promotion of tumor cell migration. The mechanism(s) through which malignant cells reconcile this conflict by avoiding growth arrest, but strengthening migration remai...

Transforming growth factor-β1 (TGF-β1) plays a vital role in the process of epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) in breast cancer and the cullin 4A (CUL4A) gene is overexpressed in primary breast cancer. However, whether TGF-β1 signaling can induce CUL4A expression has not been investigated to date, at least to the best of our knowledge. In this study, using breast cancer cell lines, we f...