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The study of the influence of vitamin E analogues on malignant mesothelioma
Kovářová, Jaromíra ; Neužil, Jiří (advisor) ; Kozubík, Alois (referee) ; Vítek, Libor (referee)
Cancer is a leading cause of death in the western world and is increasing in frequency world-wide. Although diagnosis, treatment and therapeutic approaches to cancer have improved, many types of cancer are still lethal due to the lack of radical treatment. One of the fatal neoplastic disease types with poor prognosis is represented by malignant mesothelioma (MM). MM is characterised by very high mortality rate and limited therapeutic options. The etiology of the disease is mainly associated with exposure to asbestos fibres. The incidence of MM is increasing in many countries. The search for novel molecular targets, anti-cancer strategies and drugs, which would considerably improve the treatment is of great importance. Certain new drugs, especially those with specific molecular targets, show high selectivity in their action to cancer cells, and have considerably increased the cure rate in some types of cancer. Mitochondria have recently emerged as a very promising target for anti-cancer agents. A group of compounds with anti-cancer activity that induce apoptosis by way of mitochondrial destabilisation, termed 'mitocans', have been a recent focus of research. Several mitocans have been shown to selectively induce apoptosis in cancer cells and suppress the growth of many types of carcinomas in...
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Resenzitalizace leukemických a lymfomavých buněk k trailerem indukované apoptóze
Molinský, Jan ; Klener, Pavel (advisor) ; Hyršlová Vaculová, Alena (referee) ; Vyoral, Daniel (referee)
Apoptosis serves as a natural barrier to cancer development, and the resistance to apoptosis represents one of the key capabilities acquired during tumor development or progression. Impairment of the intrinsic apoptotic pathway exemplifies one of the established mechanisms of constitutive or acquired drug resistance. As most of the currently used cytotoxic drugs initiate tumor cell death by direct or indirect triggering of the intrinsic apoptotic pathway, impairment of the intrinsic pathway is associated with therapy failure. Targeting of the death receptors, however, enables induction of apoptosis even in the chemotherapy resistant cancer cells. TRAIL is a death ligand belonging to the TNFα superfamily that specifically kills tumor cells while sparing healthy tissues. Much enthusiasm has been generated for TRAIL as a highly promising targeted anti-cancer agent. However, many primary tumors have been shown to be TRAIL resistant. In attempt to overcome such an intrinsic TRAIL resistance a wide array of agents have been shown to sensitize tumor cells to TRAIL. Previous studies reported that roscovitine, a cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor, sensitized various solid cancer cells to TRAIL. In this study we analyzed the sensitivity of diverse hematologic malignancies to TRAIL-induced apoptosis and measured the...
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Intracellular signalling of Chk2 kinase and impact of its defects in oncogenesis
Stolařová, Lenka ; Kleibl, Zdeněk (advisor) ; Brábek, Jan (referee)
Chk2 (checkpoint kinase 2), a regulatory protein of the cell cycle checkpoints, is coded by CHEK2 gene. Chk2 belongs to serine/threonine kinase family and its dominant activity is in regulation and signal distribution of intracellular response to DNA damage. The upstream regulator of Chk2 protein is the ATM kinase that activates Chk2 by its phosphorylation on Thr68 localized in FHA domain. This in turn leads to the conformation change inducing homodimerization of Chk2 protomers and their activating phosphorylation within their kinase domains. Upon phosphorylation, catalytically active Chk2 protomers dissociate and phosphorylate various intracellular proteins (incl. p53, E2F-1, BRCA1, Cdc25A a C, BRCA2 a PLK3). By regulation of these proteins, Chk2 contributes to the cell cycle arrest, regulation of DNA repair and apoptosis. Germline mutations in CHEK2 gene were identified with the increased frequency in many human cancers, including breast and colorectal cancer. Hence, the failure of Chk2 intracellular activity contributes to the process of malignant transformation.
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Cell death-regulating micro RNAs and their role in the development and pathological processes.
Běhounek, Matěj ; Anděra, Ladislav (advisor) ; Seifertová, Eva (referee)
MicroRNAs are small protein non-coding, ~ 22 nucleotides long dsRNAs. Their main task is suppression of gene expression via removal/destabilization of mRNA or its targeting to degradation. These small molecules play an important role in the regulation of many cellular processes and have been found to affect expression of more than 30% of human genes. Among the processes affected or regulated by miRNAa belongs also programmed cell death. Although this work is mainly focused on the analysis and characterization a role of distinct miRNAs in the regulation of apoptotic cell death, miRNAs can also participate in the regulation of autophagic cell death or programmed necrosis. MiRNA can enhance cellular sensitivity to apoptosis by suppressing the expression of death receptor genes, but can also drive cells to apoptosis by regulating expression of anti-apoptotic protein Bcl-2. In many different organisms were already discovered and described thausends of micro RNAs anddozens of them participate in the regulation of cell death. Poor or impaired function of miRNAs and related disturbance in apoptotic signaling could lead to a number of pathological processes as tumorigenesis or disturbances in tissue development and homeostasis. . Understanding how miRNA functions in cell death and possible practical...
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The significance of autophagy and its communication with the apoptotic machinery for cellular survival or cell death
Pazour, Vítězslav ; Anděra, Ladislav (advisor) ; Černý, Jan (referee)
Autophagy is a cellular proces, taht allows degradation of a portion of cytoplasm, protein aggregates or entire organelles. Major function of autophagy is the maintainance of cellular homeostasis, the protection against stress and mobilization of internal resources. However, autophagy also has a role in imunity, development and differentiation. Autophagic signaling can interact with apoptotic machinery at several levels via regulatory proteins of both pathways or via mutual degradation or cleavage of the components of both pathways. Autophagy can communicate with both extrinsic and intrinsic pathways of apoptosis. Under certain circumstances can autophagy by itself also induce cell death. Autophagic cell death called also programmed cell death of type II is accompanied by massive vacuolization and lysosomal autodestruction of the affected cell. Autophagic cell death was documented during Drosophila development but also in mammalian cells. Autophagy also play importamt role in tumorogenesis, where it can either protect tumor cells against various stresses or it can contribute to their death. Further research of autophagic signaling and mechanisms of communication between autophagy and apoptosis may ont only extend our knowledge on these essential processes but can also contribute to cancer therapy. Powered...
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The role of autophagy in apoptosis induction by fatty acids in pancreatic beta cells.
Žigová, Ivana ; Němcová, Vlasta (advisor) ; Truksa, Jaroslav (referee)
Type 2 diabetes mellitus represents a metabolic disease reaching epidemic dimensions in the 21st century. Fatty acid-induced apoptosis of pancreatic β-cells significantly contributes to its pathogenesis. Saturated fatty acids (FAs) are strongly cytotoxic for β-cells, whereas unsaturated FAs are well tolerable by β-cells, they are even able to inhibit proapoptotic effects of saturated FAs when co-incubated. According to recent studies, FAs-induced apoptosis in pancreatic β-cells is partly regulated by autophagy, a catabolic process involved in the degradation and recyclation of cell components in lysosomes. The aim of this diploma thesis was to contribute to the clarification of the role of autophagy in FAs-induced apoptosis regulation. We induced apoptosis in human pancreatic β- cell line NES2Y by 1 mM stearic acid (SA) and inhibited it with 0.2 mM oleic acid (OA) co- incubated with SA. We revealed, that the saturated SA used in apoptosis-inducing concentration simultaneously inhibits the autophagic flux in pancreatic NES2Y cell line. When SA is co- incubated with unsaturated OA in concentration sufficient for inhibition of proapoptotic effect of SA, OA is also able to inhibit the block of autophagy induced by the effect of SA. Application of unsaturated OA alone in this concentration did not...
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Molecular mechanisms of apoptosis induction in cancer cells.
Fenclová, Tereza ; Novák, Petr (advisor) ; Milichovský, Jan (referee)
Cancer diseases are now the third leading cause of death (20% of all deaths). It is therefore important to find new ways of getting tumor cells effectively and specifically disposed of and a promising path is targeted therapy. One of the most frequently deregulated protooncogenes in cancer is C-MYC, which makes it suitable as an effective target for treatment. However, the development of such targeted active ingredients is very expensive, so in this thesis we investigate natural substances that have been used for the treatment of cancer in ancient China. We examined the substances shikonin, cnicin and artemisinin. The results show that shikonin induces apoptosis of tumor cells by reducing the expression of C-MYC and activating tumor suppressor kinase MST1. Cnicin reduces the expression of C-MYC as well, but activates MST1 only weakly. Artemisinin, on the other hand, increases expression of C-MYC and doesn't activate MST1, thus operates on inducing apoptosis of tumor cells by a completely different mechanism. (In Czech)
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Charakterizace TRAILem indukované, receptor-specifické signalizace v nádorových buňkách.
Peterka, Martin ; Anděra, Ladislav (advisor) ; Rohlena, Jakub (referee)
TNF-related apoptosis-inducing ligand (TRAIL) is a member of TNF family expressed mainly by hematopoietic cells. TRAIL brought significant attention mainly for its ability to trigger apoptosis in a number of cancer cells. In addition to apoptosis, TRAIL can induce several other signaling pathways such as activation of MAP kinases or canonical NF-B signaling. Human TRAIL can bind to five receptors but only two of them (death receptors TRAIL-R1/DR4 and TRAIL-R2/DR5) can trigger TRAIL-mediated apoptotic and non-apoptotic signaling in target cells. Both receptors are ubiquitously expressed on normal and cancer cells, but the relative contribution of DR4 and DR5 to TRAIL-induced signaling is not well known. Using DR4/DR5-specific variants of TRAIL, we examined how individual receptor contributes to the induction of apoptosis and NF-B, JNK, p38, ERK1/2 and TAK1 signaling pathways in selected colorectal cells. We found that in DLD-1 cells, apoptosis and activation of JNKs are mainly mediated by DR4-selective ligand. In TRAIL-resistant HT-29 cells, we show that though DISC formation and activation of caspase-8 proceeds mainly via DR4-specific signaling, activation of NF-B pathway is mainly triggered by DR5 selective ligand. In other cells and analyzed signaling pathways both receptor-specific ligands triggered very...
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Analysis of the pathways responsible for the resistance of leukemic cells towards L-asparaginase
Šimčíková, Markéta ; Konvalinka, Jan (advisor) ; Poljaková, Jitka (referee)
Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL) is the most frequent malignancy in childhood. Despite the very successful ALL therapy, relapses occur to 15-20 % of children. One of the possible relaps causes is the resistance to therapeutics. ALL is treated with combined chemotherapy in which cytostatic agent L-asparaginase plays the essen- tial role. L-asparaginase depletes extracellular asparagine and glutamine. Antagonist of the L-asparaginase is asparagine synthetase enzyme, which synthesizes the cellular asparagine. The specific antileukaemic effect of L-asparaginase is believed to be thanks to lower activity of the asparagine synthetase in leukaemic cells comparing to the healthy cells. The asparagine and glutamine deficiency harms the cellular proteosyn- thesis and induces apoptosis. Mechanism of the L-asparaginase cytotoxic effect and mechanism of corresponding resistance is still not fully explained. This bachelor thesis is a part of a project studying mechanisms of leukaemic cells resistance to L-aparaginase. In the model leukaemic REH cell line a deletion del(5)(q34) was discovered, which cannot be found in the resistant clone of these cells. This thesis focuses on proving different sensitivity of leukaemic cells, with or without the deletion, to L-asparaginase. The limiting dilution was used to obtain...
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Preparation and characterization of nanoliposomal carriers of hydrophobic cytostatics using nanofluidic mixing
Zelníčková, Jaroslava ; Mašek,, Josef (referee) ; Turánek, Jaroslav (advisor)
This diploma thesis is focused on preparation of liposome by relatively new method called nanofluidisation. This method allows the controlled preparation of small unilamellar liposomes in one step. In my thesis I was dealing with optimalization of liposomes preparation which carry hydrophobic cytostatics using this method. Cytotoxic effect of liposomes carrying hydrophobic cytostatics in vitro on cell lines A549 and MCF-7 was determined. In cytotoxicyty test I compared the effect of hydrophobic cytostatics (paclitaxel and derivates of vitamin E specifically alfa-Tos, alfa-TEA) that were incorporated into liposomes prepared via nanofluidisation method and lipid film hydration method. Moreover, a technology of lyophilisation in the presence of cryoprotectants for preparation of liposomes using the method of nanofluidisation was developed.
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