PURPOSE The adult newt can regenerate lens from pigmented epithelial cells (PECs) of the dorsal iris via dedifferentiation. The purpose of this research is to obtain sequence resources for a newt lens regeneration study and to obtain insights of dedifferentiation at the molecular level. METHODS mRNA was purified from iris during dedifferentiation and its cDNA library was constructed. From the...

Background: Peripheral nerve injury (PNI) is a common condition that compromises motor and sensory functions. Peripheral nerves are known to have regenerative capability and the pineal hormone, melatonin, is known to aid nerve regeneration. However, the role of Schwann cells and the pathways involved remain unclear. Thus, the aim of this study is to identify the effects of melatonin on Schwann ...

Sarcomatoid renal cell carcinoma represents high-grade transformation of different subtypes of renal cell carcinoma and is associated with a dismal prognosis and high resistance to chemotherapy. We report on the course of disease of a 63 years old patient undergoing a nearly complete remission of multiple intracranial and spinal metastatic lesions of a sarcomatoid renal cell carcinoma by a comb...

The aim of this study is to describe rare variants of adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC) and to compare the prognosis with that of conventional ACC. We retrospectively reviewed 8 cases of myxoid variant, 1 sarcomatoid variant, and 14 cases of conventional ACC, who underwent surgical resection at the Asan Medical Center between 1996 and 2014. An analysis of the clinicopathological characteristics, i...

Renal cell carcinomas sometimes show sarcomatoid transformation, thus comprising both sarcomatous and carcinomatous components. Such sarcomatoid renal cell carcinomas are highly malignant with pronounced proliferative activity. The present investigation was conducted to assess the mutational status of the p53 and H-ras genes independently in carcinomatous and sarcomatous portions of individual ...

Dedifferentiation is the transformation of cells from a given differentiated state to a less differentiated or stem cell-like state. Stem cell-related genes play important roles in dedifferentiation, which exhibits similar histone modification and DNA methylation features to stem cell maintenance. Hence, stem cell-related factors possibly synergistically function to provide a specific niche ben...

BACKGROUND The coordinated activation of extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) and p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase (p38MAPK) is critical for the induction of vascular and visceral smooth muscle cell (SMC) dedifferentiation. We previously reported that on the forced activation of both MAPKs, visceral SMCs secrete a non-heparin-binding protein factor(s) that is involved in the dediffer...

BACKGROUND The clinical trials that reported benefit of the rapalogs temsirolimus and everolimus in advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC) were primarily conducted in patients with clear-cell histology (ccRCC). We assessed outcome with these mammalian target of rapamicin (mTOR) inhibitors in two subsets of kidney cancer: sarcomatoid variant ccRCC and nonclear-cell RCC. PATIENTS AND METHODS Basel...