Browsing by Author "Liu, Song"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    BORIS expression in ovarian cancer precursor cells alters the CTCF cistrome and enhances invasiveness through GALNT14
    (American Association for Cancer Research, 2019-10) Hillman, Joanna C.; Pugacheva, Elena M.; Barger, Carter J.; Sribenja, Sirinapa; Rosario, Spencer; Albahrani, Mustafa; Truskinovsky, Alexander M.; Stablewski, Aimee; Liu, Song; Loukinov, Dmitri I.; Zentner, Gabriel E.; Lobanenkov, Victor V.; Karpf, Adam R.; Higgins, Michael J.; Medicine, School of Medicine
    High-grade serous carcinoma (HGSC) is the most aggressive and predominant form of epithelial ovarian cancer and the leading cause of gynecological cancer death. We have previously shown that CTCFL (also known as BORIS, Brother of the Regulator of Imprinted Sites) is expressed in most ovarian cancers, and is associated with global and promoter-specific DNA hypomethylation, advanced tumor stage, and poor prognosis. To explore its role in HGSC, we expressed BORIS in human fallopian tube secretory epithelial cells (FTSEC), the presumptive cells of origin for HGSC. BORIS-expressing cells exhibited increased motility and invasion, and BORIS expression was associated with alterations in several cancer-associated gene expression networks, including fatty acid metabolism, TNF signaling, cell migration, and ECM-receptor interactions. Importantly, GALNT14, a glycosyltransferase gene implicated in cancer cell migration and invasion, was highly induced by BORIS, and GALNT14 knockdown significantly abrogated BORIS-induced cell motility and invasion. In addition, in silico analyses provided evidence for BORIS and GALNT14 co-expression in several cancers. Finally, ChIP-seq demonstrated that expression of BORIS was associated with de novo and enhanced binding of CTCF at hundreds of loci, many of which correlated with activation of transcription at target genes, including GALNT14. Taken together, our data indicate that BORIS may promote cell motility and invasion in HGSC via upregulation of GALNT14, and suggests BORIS as a potential therapeutic target in this malignancy.
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    Multiple functional variants in the IL1RL1 region are pretransplant markers for risk of GVHD and infection deaths
    (American Society of Hematology, 2019-08-27) Karaesmen, Ezgi; Hahn, Theresa; Dile, Alexander James; Rizvi, Abbas A.; Wang, Junke; Wang, Tao; Haagenson, Michael D.; Preus, Leah; Zhu, Qianqian; Liu, Qian; Yan, Li; Liu, Song; Haiman, Christopher A.; Stram, Daniel; Pooler, Loreall; Sheng, Xin; Van Den Berg, David; Brock, Guy; Webb, Amy; McCarthy, Philip L.; Pasquini, Marcelo C.; Spellman, Stephen R.; Lee, Stephanie J.; Paczesny, Sophie; Sucheston-Campbell, Lara E.; Pediatrics, School of Medicine
    Graft-versus-host disease (GVHD) and infections are the 2 main causes of death without relapse after allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT). Elevated soluble serum simulation-2 (sST2), the product of IL1RL1 in plasma/serum post-HCT, is a validated GVHD biomarker. Hundreds of SNPs at 2q12.1 have been shown to be strongly associated with sST2 concentrations in healthy populations. We therefore hypothesized that the donor genetic variants in IL1RL1 correlate with sST2 protein levels associated with patient survival outcomes after HCT. We used DISCOVeRY-BMT (Determining the Influence of Susceptibility Conveying Variants Related to 1-Year Mortality after Blood and Marrow Transplantation), a genomic study of >3000 donor-recipient pairs, to inform our hypothesis. We first measured pre-HCT plasma/serum sST2 levels in a subset of DISCOVeRY-BMT donors (n = 757) and tested the association of donor sST2 levels with donor single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in the 2q12.1 region. Donor SNPs associated with sST2 levels were then tested for association with recipient death caused by acute GVHD (aGVHD)-, infection-, and transplant-related mortality in cohorts 1 and 2. Meta-analyses of cohorts 1 and 2 were performed using fixed-effects inverse variance weighting, and P values were corrected for multiple comparisons. Donor risk alleles in rs22441131 (P meta = .00026) and rs2310241 (P meta = .00033) increased the cumulative incidence of aGVHD death up to fourfold and were associated with high sST2 levels. Donor risk alleles at rs4851601 (P meta = 9.7 × 10-7), rs13019803 (P meta = 8.9 × 10-6), and rs13015714 (P meta = 5.3 × 10-4) increased cumulative incidence of infection death to almost sevenfold and were associated with low sST2 levels. These functional variants are biomarkers of infection or aGVHD death and could facilitate donor selection, prophylaxis, and a conditioning regimen to reduce post-HCT mortality.
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    SP5 : Improving Protein Fold Recognition by Using Torsion Angle Profiles and Profile-Based Gap Penalty Model
    (PLOS, 2008-06-04) Zhang, Wei; Liu, Song; Zhou, Yaoqi; BioHealth Informatics, School of Informatics and Computing
    How to recognize the structural fold of a protein is one of the challenges in protein structure prediction. We have developed a series of single (non-consensus) methods (SPARKS, SP2, SP3, SP4) that are based on weighted matching of two to four sequence and structure-based profiles. There is a robust improvement of the accuracy and sensitivity of fold recognition as the number of matching profiles increases. Here, we introduce a new profile-profile comparison term based on real-value dihedral torsion angles. Together with updated real-value solvent accessibility profile and a new variable gap-penalty model based on fractional power of insertion/deletion profiles, the new method (SP5) leads to a robust improvement over previous SP method. There is a 2% absolute increase (5% relative improvement) in alignment accuracy over SP4 based on two independent benchmarks. Moreover, SP5 makes 7% absolute increase (22% relative improvement) in success rate of recognizing correct structural folds, and 32% relative improvement in model accuracy of models within the same fold in Lindahl benchmark. In addition, modeling accuracy of top-1 ranked models is improved by 12% over SP4 for the difficult targets in CASP 7 test set. These results highlight the importance of harnessing predicted structural properties in challenging remote-homolog recognition. The SP5 server is available at http://sparks.informatics.iupui.edu.
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    Surgical intervention combined with weight-bearing walking training improves neurological recoveries in 320 patients with clinically complete spinal cord injury: a prospective self-controlled study
    (Wolters Kluwer, 2021-05) Liu, Yansheng; Xie, Jia-Xin; Niu, Fang; Xu, Zhexi; Tan, Pengju; Shen, Caihong; Gao, Hongkun; Liu, Song; Ma, Zhengwen; So, Kwok-Fai; Wu, Wutian; Chen, Chen; Gao, Sujuan; Xu, Xiao-Ming; Zhu, Hui; Neurological Surgery, School of Medicine
    Although a large number of trials in the SCI field have been conducted, few proven gains have been realized for patients. In the present study, we determined the efficacy of a novel combination treatment involving surgical intervention and long-term weight-bearing walking training in spinal cord injury (SCI) subjects clinically diagnosed as complete or American Spinal Injury Association Impairment Scale (AIS) Class A (AIS-A). A total of 320 clinically complete SCI subjects (271 male and 49 female), aged 16-60 years, received early (≤ 7 days, n = 201) or delayed (8-30 days, n = 119) surgical interventions to reduce intraspinal or intramedullary pressure. Fifteen days post-surgery, all subjects received a weight-bearing walking training with the "Kunming Locomotion Training Program (KLTP)" for a duration of 6 months. The neurological deficit and recovery were assessed using the AIS scale and a 10-point Kunming Locomotor Scale (KLS). We found that surgical intervention significantly improved AIS scores measured at 15 days post-surgery as compared to the pre-surgery baseline scores. Significant improvement of AIS scores was detected at 3 and 6 months and the KLS further showed significant improvements between all pair-wise comparisons of time points of 15 days, 3 or 6 months indicating continued improvement in walking scores during the 6-month period. In conclusion, combining surgical intervention within 1 month post-injury and weight-bearing locomotor training promoted continued and statistically significant neurological recoveries in subjects with clinically complete SCI, which generally shows little clinical recovery within the first year after injury and most are permanently disabled. This study was approved by the Science and Research Committee of Kunming General Hospital of PLA and Kunming Tongren Hospital, China and registered at ClinicalTrials.gov (Identifier: NCT04034108) on July 26, 2019.
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    Surgical intervention combined with weight-bearing walking training promotes recovery in patients with chronic spinal cord injury: a randomized controlled study
    (Wolters Kluwer, 2024) Zhu, Hui; Guest, James D.; Dunlop, Sarah; Xie, Jia-Xin; Gao, Sujuan; Luo, Zhuojing; Springer, Joe E.; Wu, Wutian; Young, Wise; Poon, Wai Sang; Liu, Song; Gao, Hongkun; Yu, Tao; Wang, Dianchun; Zhou, Libing; Wu, Shengping; Zhong, Lei; Niu, Fang; Wang, Xiaomei; Liu, Yansheng; So, Kwok-Fai; Xu, Xiao-Ming; Neurological Surgery, School of Medicine
    For patients with chronic spinal cord injury, the conventional treatment is rehabilitation and treatment of spinal cord injury complications such as urinary tract infection, pressure sores, osteoporosis, and deep vein thrombosis. Surgery is rarely performed on spinal cord injury in the chronic phase, and few treatments have been proven effective in chronic spinal cord injury patients. Development of effective therapies for chronic spinal cord injury patients is needed. We conducted a randomized controlled clinical trial in patients with chronic complete thoracic spinal cord injury to compare intensive rehabilitation (weight-bearing walking training) alone with surgical intervention plus intensive rehabilitation. This clinical trial was registered at ClinicalTrials.gov (NCT02663310). The goal of surgical intervention was spinal cord detethering, restoration of cerebrospinal fluid flow, and elimination of residual spinal cord compression. We found that surgical intervention plus weight-bearing walking training was associated with a higher incidence of American Spinal Injury Association Impairment Scale improvement, reduced spasticity, and more rapid bowel and bladder functional recovery than weight-bearing walking training alone. Overall, the surgical procedures and intensive rehabilitation were safe. American Spinal Injury Association Impairment Scale improvement was more common in T7–T11 injuries than in T2–T6 injuries. Surgery combined with rehabilitation appears to have a role in treatment of chronic spinal cord injury patients.