Annexin A Protein Family in Atherosclerosis

Atherosclerosis, a silent chronic vascular pathology, is the cause of the majority of cardiovascular ischaemic events. Atherosclerosis is characterized by a series of deleterious changes in cellularity, including endothelial dysfunction, transmigration of circulating inflammatory cells into the arterial wall, pro-inflammatory cytokines production, lipid accumulation in the intima, vascular local inflammatory response, atherosclerosis-related cells apoptosis and autophagy. Proteins of Annexin A (AnxA) family, the well-known Ca²⁺ phospholipid-binding protein, have many functions in regulating inflammation-related enzymes and cell signaling transduction, thus influencing cell adhesion, migration, differentiation, proliferation and apoptosis. There is now accumulating evidence that some members of the AnxA family, such as AnxA1, AnxA2, AnxA5 and AnxA7, play major roles in the development of atherosclerosis. This article discusses the major roles of AnxA1, AnxA2, AnxA5 and AnxA7, and the multifaceted mechanisms of the main biological process in which they are involved in atherosclerosis. Considering these evidences, it has been proposed that AnxA are drivers- and not merely participator- on the road to atherosclerosis, thus the progression of atherosclerosis may be prevented by targeting the expression or function of the AnxA family proteins.

The prognostic significance of annexin A family in glioblastoma

BACKGROUND

Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most common histological type of glioma, which has the most aggressive biological characters and the worst outcome. The targeted therapy of GBM requires more progression, and new biomarkers should be identified.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

In our study, we firstly retrieved the data of TCGA and compared the TPMs of all ANXAs in TCGA database. By quantitative PCR (qPCR), we detected the mRNA levels of ANXAs in 8 pairs of GBM tissues and their corresponding normal brain tissues. Moreover, we detected the expression of ANXAs in 118 cases of GBMs, and further evaluated their clinical significance by analyzing the correlation with clinicopathological factors, and estimated their prognostic significance with univariate and multivariate analyses.

RESULTS

In the TCGA database, ANXA1, ANXA2, ANXA4, and ANXA5 had higher transcripts per million (TPMs) in GBM tissues compared with the normal brain tissues, while ANXA3 expression was downregulated in GBM tissues. With qPCR, ANXA1, ANXA2, and ANXA10 were verified to be the upregulated genes in GBM, but other ANXAs had no significant differences. ANXA2 and ANXA10, but not ANXA1, were correlated with poor prognosis of GBM and identified as independent prognostic biomarkers for poor outcome.

CONCLUSIONS

ANXA1, ANXA2, and ANXA10 are the upregulated genes in GBM. ANXA2 and ANXA10, but not ANXA1, are independent prognostic biomarkers indicating unfavorable outcome. Our results suggest that expression profiles based on ANXA10 expression may be a new classification system to predict prognosis of GBM patients.

Roles of Annexin A protein family in autophagy regulation and therapy

Annexin A is a kind of calcium-dependent phospholipid-binding proteins, which contributes to the formation of the cell membranes and cytoskeleton and played a part as a membrane skeleton to stabilize lipid bilayer. Autophagy is one of the most important programmed cell death mechanisms. And recently some reports suggest that annexin A family protein is associated with autophagy for annexin A can regulate the formation of vesicular lipid membranes and promote cell exocytosis. In this review, we summarized the roles of annexin A protein family in autophagy regulation and targeted medical treatment for better diagnoses and therapies.