In this study, we sought to investigate the expression of microRNA (miR)-214 on the osteogenic differentiation of bone marrow‑derived mesenchymal stem cells (BMSCs) and explore the possible underlying mechanisms. We found that the overexpression of miR‑214 effectively promoted the adipocyte differentiation of BMSCs in vitro, reduced alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity and the gene expression of...

OBJECTIVES Pancreatic adenocarcinoma is a deadly disease with an overall 5-year patient survival of less than 5%. This dismal prognosis of pancreatic cancer is largely due to the advanced stage of the disease at presentation. If pancreatic cancer could be diagnosed more readily and accurately using serum markers, patient survival could theoretically be improved by enabling more patients to avai...

Objective: Pancreatic adenocarcinoma is a deadly disease with an overall 5-year patient survival of less than 5%. This dismal prognosis of pancreatic cancer is largely due to the advanced stage of the disease at presentation. If pancreatic cancer could be diagnosed more readily and accurately using serum markers, patient survival could theoretically be improved by enabling more patients to avai...

Two conflicting conclusions regarding the structure of the mouse osteopontin (OPN) gene were tested for their validity. Miyazaki et al. (Miyazaki, Y., Setoguchi, M., Yoshida, S., Higuchi, Y., Akizuki, S., and Yamamoto, S. (1990) J. Biol. Chem. 265, 14432-14438) state that the OPN gene is composed of six exons and spans approximately 4.8 kilobases. Craig and Denhardt (Craig, A. M., and Denhardt,...

PHOSPHO1 and tissue-nonspecific alkaline phosphatase (TNAP) have nonredundant functions during skeletal mineralization. Although TNAP deficiency (Alpl(-/-) mice) leads to hypophosphatasia, caused by accumulation of the mineralization inhibitor inorganic pyrophosphate (PPi ), comparably elevated levels of PPi in Phospho1(-/-) mice do not explain their stunted growth, spontaneous fractures, bowed...

Biomarkers that assess treatment response for patients with the autoimmune disorder, myasthenia gravis (MG), have not been evaluated to a significant extent. We hypothesized the pro-inflammatory cytokine, osteopontin (OPN), may be associated with variability of response to glucocorticoids (GCs) in patients with MG. A cohort of 250 MG patients treated with standardized protocol of GCs was recrui...

BACKGROUND The metastasis gene osteopontin (OPN) is subject to alternative splicing, which yields three messages, osteopontin-a, osteopontin-b and osteopontin-c. Osteopontin-c is selectively expressed in invasive, but not in noninvasive tumors. In the present study, we examined the expression of OPN-c in esophageal squamous cell carcinomas (ESCCs) and assessed its value as a diagnostic biomarke...