IntApop: a web service for predicting apoptotic protein interactions in humans

Research progress on pyroptosis and its effect on the central nervous system

Pyroptosis is an inflammatory and lysis type of programmed cell death. In the canonical pyroptosis signaling pathway, the NLRP3 inflammasome activates inflammatory caspase-1, which then shears cut the executor protein GSDMD. The N domains of GSDMD move to heterogeneous membranes, form pores, and release inflammatory cytokines IL-1β and IL-18, causing cell membrane swelling and rupture. Pyroptosis is mainly regulated by the key proteins in the signaling pathway, including inflammasome, caspase-1, GSDMD, IL-1β, and IL-18, as well as their agonists and inhibitors. Appropriate pyroptosis can improve host defense mechanisms, while excessive pyroptosis would derive pathological effects on central nervous system, leding to neuroinflammatory response, blood-brain barrier damage, and cognitive disfunction.

In Silico Screening Identifies a Novel Potential PARP1 Inhibitor Targeting Synthetic Lethality in Cancer Treatment

Synthetic lethality describes situations in which defects in two different genes or pathways together result in cell death. This concept has been applied to drug development for cancer treatment, as represented by Poly (ADP-ribose) polymerase (PARPs) inhibitors. In the current study, we performed a computational screening to discover new PARP inhibitors. Among the 11,247 compounds analyzed, one natural product, ZINC67913374, stood out by its superior performance in the simulation analyses. Compared with the FDA approved PARP1 inhibitor, olaparib, our results demonstrated that the ZINC67913374 compound achieved a better grid score (-86.8) and amber score (-51.42). Molecular dynamics simulations suggested that the PARP1-ZINC67913374 complex was more stable than olaparib. The binding free energy for ZINC67913374 was -177.28 kJ/mol while that of olaparib was -159.16 kJ/mol. These results indicated ZINC67913374 bound to PARP1 with a higher affinity, which suggest ZINC67913374 has promising potential for cancer drug development.

Identification of Novel Pathways in Plant Lectin-Induced Cancer Cell Apoptosis

Plant lectins have been investigated to elucidate their complicated mechanisms due to their remarkable anticancer activities. Although plant lectins seems promising as a potential anticancer agent for further preclinical and clinical uses, further research is still urgently needed and should include more focus on molecular mechanisms. Herein, a Naïve Bayesian model was developed to predict the protein-protein interaction (PPI), and thus construct the global human PPI network. Moreover, multiple sources of biological data, such as smallest shared biological process (SSBP), domain-domain interaction (DDI), gene co-expression profiles and cross-species interolog mapping were integrated to build the core apoptotic PPI network. In addition, we further modified it into a plant lectin-induced apoptotic cell death context. Then, we identified 22 apoptotic hub proteins in mesothelioma cells according to their different microarray expressions. Subsequently, we used combinational methods to predict microRNAs (miRNAs) which could negatively regulate the abovementioned hub proteins. Together, we demonstrated the ability of our Naïve Bayesian model-based network for identifying novel plant lectin-treated cancer cell apoptotic pathways. These findings may provide new clues concerning plant lectins as potential apoptotic inducers for cancer drug discovery.