Project description:Penile carcinoma (PeCa) is a rare cancer with orphan disease designation and a prevalence of 0.1-1 per 100,000 men in high-income countries, but it constitutes up to 10% of malignancies in men in some African, Asian and South American regions . Evidence demonstrated that the tumor microenvironment (TME) plays a crucial role in the tumor progression and therapy response. Two landmarks of TME, extracellular matrix (ECM) remodeling and inflammation have been reported in these tumors. However, the cell types and cellular crosstalk involved in PeCa are widely unexplored. We used microarrays to identify enriched immune and stromal cells from the secretory profile of penile cancer transcriptomes.
Project description:Penile cancer (PeCa) is a relatively rare tumor entity but possesses higher morbidity and mortality rates especially in developing countries. To date, the concrete pathogenic signaling pathways and core machineries involved in tumorigenesis and progression of PeCa remain to be elucidated. Several studies suggested that miRNAs, which modulate gene expression at posttranscriptional level, were frequently mis-regulated and aberrantly expressed in human cancers. However, the miRNA profiles in human penile cancer have not been reported before. In this present study, the miRNA profiles were obtained from 10 fresh penile cancerous tissues and matched adjacent non-cancerous penile tissues via NGS. As a result, a total of 751 and 806 annotated miRNAs were identified in normal and cancerous penile tissues, respectively. Among which, 56 miRNAs with significantly different expression levels between paired penile tissues were identified. Subsequently, several annotated miRNAs were selected randomly and validated using quantitative real-time PCR. Compared with the previous publications regarding to the altered miRNAs expression in various types of cancers and especially genitourinary (prostate, bladder, kidney, testis) cancers, the most majority of deregulated miRNAs showed the similar expression pattern in penile cancer. Moreover, the bioinformatics analysis suggested that the putative target genes of the differentially expressed miRNAs were tightly associated with cell junction, proliferation, growth as well as genomic instability and so on, by modulating Wnt, MAPK, p53, PI3K-Akt, Notch, Hedgehog and TGF-β signaling pathways, which were all well-established to be involved in cancer initiation and progression. Our work presents a global view of the differentially expressed miRNAs and potentially regulatory networks of their target genes for clarifing the pathogenic transformation of normal penis to PeCa, which research resource also provides new insights into future investigations aimed to explore the in-depth mechanisms of miRNAs and other small RNAs including piRNAs in penile carcinogenesis regulation and effective target-specific theragnosis.
Project description:We aim to detect differential gene expression using RNA-seq between normal penile epithelial tissue and PB-Cre+ Smad4L/L ApcL/L penile tumors of mice
Project description:Penile erection is mediated by the corpora cavernosa, a trabecular-like vascular bed, which enlarges upon vasodilation, but its regulation is not completely understood. Here, we show that perivascular fibroblasts in the corpora cavernosa support vasodilation by reducing norepinephrine availability. We used scRNAseq to investigate fibroblast heterogeneity in the penis.
Project description:Penile cancer is a rare disease that has high morbidity and mortality rates. While a few biomarkers related to prognosis have been previously described to date, none of them was adopted in clinical practice. We used microarrays to identify miRNA-based molecular signatures to identify penile carcinoma regions from paired normal-adjacent tissues. We also used microarray information to distinguish patients with a high risk of metastatic penile carcinoma.
Project description:Gene expression microarray was used to evaluate altered genes related and non related to HPV infection status in order to identify potential molecular markers in penile cancer (PC). RNA was extracted from thirty-nine fresh frozen PC samples and submitted to gene expression microarray. The normal penile pool consisted of total RNA from five autopsy glands. Specific gene expression alterations were investigated by RT-qPCR. DNA was also extracted from penile samples and submitted to HPV genotyping.
Project description:SNP array data from 125 hepatocellular carcinomas were used to detect recurrent copy number alterations. 99 hepatocellular carcinomas and 86 matched normal samples were analyzed with Illumina HumanCNV370-Duo v1.0 chips. 26 hepatocellular carcinomas and 26 matched normal samples were analyzed with Illumina HumanOmniExpress BeadChip.
Project description:Array-based comparative genomic hybridization (aCGH) was used to evaluate DNA copy number alterations related and non related to HPV infection status aiming to identify potential molecular markers in penile cancer (PC).