Lung cancer is the leading cause of death in Australia with 13,000 new cases per year. Although targeted therapy and immunotherapy have drastically changed treatment landscape, majority patients will receive platinum-based chemotherapy for which response rate approximately 30% (Reck et al, 2016). An immunohistochemistry-based, predictive biomarker would be beneficial help avoid toxicity unlikel...

Although it is clear that human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG) and progesterone play fundamental roles in pregnancy, the regulation of placental production of these hormones remains to be defined. Recent evidence suggests that the human placenta expresses proteins related to inhibin (alpha beta subunits) or activin (beta beta subunits). Inhibin and activin (follicle-stimulating hormone-releasing ...

Decidualization of the human endometrium is critical for implantation, but the mechanisms involved are largely unknown. Activin subunits are expressed in endometrium during decidualization. From its known actions in cell differentiation and tissue remodelling, we hypothesized that activin A is involved in the paracrine regulation of decidualization. We examined the expression of activin recepto...

Activin has a wide variety of biological functions, including the regulation of cell proliferation and inhibition of tumor cells. We have studied whether activin regulates apoptosis by investigating the effects of activin A on cell proliferation, cell cycle, apoptosis, apoptosis-related gene expression, and caspase activity in SNU-16 cells. Activin A significantly inhibited DNA synthesis and gr...

Activins are members of the transforming growth factor β (TGFβ) family and serve as multifunctional regulatory proteins in many tissues and organs. In the brain, activin A, which is formed by two disulfide-linked βA subunits, is recognized as the predominant player in activin signaling. Over the last years, considerable progress has been made in elucidating novel and unexpected functions of act...

Wada, Wataru, Akito Maeshima, You-Qing Zhang, Yoshihisa Hasegawa, Hiroyuki Kuwano, and Itaru Kojima. Assessment of the function of the C-subunit of activin in cultured hepatocytes. Am J Physiol Endocrinol Metab 287: E247–E254, 2004. First published March 23, 2004; 10.1152/ajpendo.00390.2003.—We assessed the function of the C-subunit of activin in hepatocytes. We studied the effect of conditione...

BACKGROUND The clinical significance of the circulating levels of activin A and matrix metalloproteinase-2 (MMP-2) and -9 (MMP-9) was investigated in patients with breast cancer (BC) or prostate cancer (PC) with (M1) or without (M0) bone metastasis. PATIENTS AND METHODS MMP-2, MMP-9 and activin A blood concentrations were measured by enzyme immunoassays in 79 cancer patients and in 57 healthy...

Activin A, a member of the transforming growth factor-beta superfamily, is constitutively expressed in hepatocytes and regulates liver mass through tonic inhibition of hepatocyte DNA synthesis. Follistatin is the main biological inhibitor of activin bioactivity. These molecules may be involved in hepatic fibrogenesis, although defined roles remain unclear. We studied activin and follistatin gen...

Activin A is a member of the transforming growth factor beta (TGFb) superfamily and a pleiotropic cytokine that regulates many processes, from reproduction and development to cancer and immunity. Activin A shares the smad2/3 signal transduction pathway with TGFb and displays overlapping biological activities with the latter, including the ability to promote the differentiation of CD4 T cells to...