Tokuhiro Chano

Shiga University of Medical Science · Department of Medical Genetics

Under the aegis of the National Infectious Diseases Act, the virus transitioned from a category 2 menace to category 5, analogous to seasonal influenza. For this classification to be appropriate, a comprehensive assessment of the immune status of the Japanese population must be conducted to ensure adequacy. The current study has investigated the pr...

Under the aegis of the National Infectious Diseases Act, the virus transitioned from a Category 2 menace to Category 5, analogous to seasonal influenza. The current study has investigated the protracted immune responses of healthcare workers (HCWs) towards SARS-CoV-2 in Japan. One year subsequent to the systematically implemented SARS-CoV-2 vaccina...

This study, which included serological and cellular immunity tests, evaluated whether coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccination adequately protected healthcare workers (HCWs) from COVID-19. Serological investigations were conducted among 1600 HCWs (mean ± standard deviation, 7.4 ± 1.4 months after the last COVID-19 vaccination). Anti-SARS-CoV...

Healthcare workers (HCWs), especially frontline workers against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), are considered to be risky because of occupational exposure to infected patients. This study evaluated the correlation between seroprevalence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) antibodies among HCWs and the implementatio...

The linear synthesis of 4′‐C‐aminoethoxy thymidine (AEoT) nucleoside phosphoramidite was accomplished using deoxythymidine as the starting material. This analog was incorporated into several oligonucleotides, the applicability of which as antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) was then evaluated. The AEoT‐modified DNA/RNA duplex exhibited improved therm...

Background: Ovarian clear cell carcinomas (OCCCs) have been recurrent and refractory among the present treatments, so novel therapeutics are urgently needed. Objective: The present study accumulates the proof of concept to examine the feasibility of RDH10 as a therapeutic target for treating OCCCs. Methods: Immunohistochemically, RDH10 express...

Background: The present study, which included a serological survey and cellular immunity tests, evaluated whether coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) vaccination adequately protected healthcare workers (HCWs) from COVID-19 over time. Methods: Serological investigations were conducted among 1,600 HCWs in December 2021 (mean ± standard deviation, 7·4...

Background: This study evaluated the efficacy of a single instillation of pirarubicin with a short retention time for preventing intravesical recurrence of low-risk non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer. Patients and methods: We analyzed 165 patients with low-risk non-muscle-invasive bladder cancer who underwent transurethral surgery. Single instil...

Ovarian clear cell carcinomas (OCCCs) are resistant to conventional anti-cancer drugs; moreover, the prognoses of advanced or recurrent patients are extremely poor. OCCCs often arise from endometriosis associated with strong oxidative stress. Of note, the stress involved in OCCCs can be divided into the following two categories: (a) carcinogenesis...

Among five subtypes of epithelial ovarian cancers, ovarian clear cell carcinomas (OCCCs) are the ones most strongly linked to oxidative stress. Oxidative stress is involved in the development of OCCCs, i.e., the malignant transformation of endometriosis to OCCC; therefore, oxidative stress should be considered as a therapeutic target for treating O...

Background: Healthcare workers (HCWs), especially frontline workers against coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), are considered to be at increased risk of infection because of occupational exposure to infected patients. This study evaluated the correlation between seroprevalence of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) antibo...

Background Accurate prediction of the prognosis of RCC using a single biomarker is challenging due to the genetic heterogeneity of the disease. However, it is essential to develop an accurate system to allow better patient selection for optimal treatment strategies. ARL4C, ECT2, SOD2, and STEAP3 are novel molecular biomarkers identified in earlier...

Background: To better understand the nature of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) findings in schwannomas, especially in the "target sign" of these findings, the histopathological investigation was performed. Methods: The MRI findings were correlated with histopathological features in 22 samples of schwannomas, which were mostly resected from the...

Background: Accurate prediction of the prognosis of RCC using a single biomarker is challenging due to the genetic heterogeneity of the disease. However, it is essential to develop an accurate system to allow better patient selection for optimal treatment strategies. ARL4C, ECT2, SOD2 and STEAP3 are novel molecular biomarkers identified in earlier...

Background: Accurate prediction of the prognosis of RCC using a single biomarker is challenging due to the genetic heterogeneity of the disease. However, it is essential to develop an accurate system to allow better patient selection for optimal treatment strategies. ARL4C, ECT2, SOD2 and STEAP3 are novel molecular biomarkers identified in earlier...

In article number 1901930, Li Zhao, Naoki Komatsu, and co‐workers functionalize nanodiamonds with polyglycerol and cyanine dye, effectively shielding protein adsorption in the blood stream, and prolonging in vivo circulation significantly. As a result, only the tumor is clearly imaged by near‐infrared fluorescence from the nanodiamonds due to their...

Background/aim: γ-Glutamylcyclotransferase (GGCT) is highly expressed in many forms of cancer, and is a promising therapeutic target. The present study investigated whether inhibition of GGCT enhanced the antiproliferative effects of the drug docetaxel in prostate cancer cells. Materials and methods: Immunohistochemistry and western blot analysi...

Ovarian clear cell carcinoma (OCCC) shows low sensitivity to conventional chemotherapy and has a poor prognosis, especially in advanced stages. Therefore, the development of innovative therapeutic strategies and precision medicine for the treatment of OCCC are important. Recently, several new molecular targets have been identified for OCCC, which c...

Preferential accumulation of nanoparticles in a tumor is realized commonly by combined effects of active and passive targeting. However, passive targeting based on an enhanced permeation and retention (EPR) effect is not sufficient to observe clear tumor fluorescence images in most of the in vivo experiments using tumor‐bearing mice. Herein, polygl...

Inhibition of gamma-glutamylcyclotransferase (GGCT), which is highly expressed in various cancer tissues, exerts anticancer effects both in vitro and in vivo. Previous studies have shown that depletion of GGCT blocks the growth of MCF7 breast cancer cells via upregulation of the cyclin-dependent kinase inhibitor p21WAF1/CIP1 (p21); in addition, ind...

Extracellular acidification is a very common cause of stress in tumor microenvironment and of Darwinian pressure. In acid areas of the tumor, most cancer cells are-albeit slowly proliferating-more resistant to cell death than those in well-perfused regions. Tumor acidosis can directly regulate the expression of pro-survival proteins since a low ext...

Background/Aim: γ-Glutamylcyclotransferase (GGCT), a key enzymes involved in glutathione metabolism, catalyzes a specific reaction that generates 5-oxoproline and free amino acids from the γ-glutamyl peptide. Inhibition of GGCT is a promising therapeutic strategy for the treatment of various cancers. Materials and Methods: Immunohistochemistry was...

Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) has the high mortality rate among urological malignancies. The development of RCC cannot be effectively reduced by molecular targeted therapies based on nutrient deprivation, such as inhibition of tumor angiogenesis. The objective of this study was to identify predictive biomarkers of poor prognosis and therapeutic molecu...

ACKGROUND: Endometrioid ovarian carcinoma and clear cell ovarian carcinoma are both classified as endometriosis-associated ovarian cancers (EAOCs). Despite the high rates of recurrence and mortality of EAOC, only a few prognostic biomarkers have been reported. Mitochondrial superoxide dismutase (SOD2) plays an important role in maintaining mitocho...

Background: Endometrioid ovarian carcinoma and clear cell ovarian carcinoma are both classified as endometriosis-associated ovarian cancer (EAOC). Despite the high rates of recurrence and mortality of EAOC, no prognostic biomarkers have been determined. ADP-ribosylation factor-like protein 4C (ARL4C) has been reported to be involved in various tum...

Similar to other types of cancer, acidification of tumor microenvironment is an important feature of osteosarcoma, and a major source of cellular stress that triggers cancer aggressiveness, drug resistance, and progression. Among the different effects of low extracellular pH on tumor cells, we have recently found that short-term exposure to acidosi...

γ-Glutamylcyclotransferase (GGCT), which is one of the major enzymes involved in glutathione metabolism, is upregulated in a wide range of cancers—glioma, breast, lung, esophageal, gastric, colorectal, urinary bladder, prostate, cervical, ovarian cancers and osteosarcoma—and promotes cancer progression; its depletion leads to the suppression of pro...

Background and objective: Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is the urological malignancy with the highest mortality rate and is increasing in incidence. The prognostic and predictive biomarkers are highly desired. This study aims to investigate the significance of superoxide dismutase 2 (SOD2) as a clinical biomarker in patients with renal cell carcinoma...

Dormant cancer cells are starvation-resistant leading to problems in the management of cancer. In renal cell carcinomas (RCCs), starvation-resistant cells are resistant to various currently available therapies. However, targeting hypoxia inducible factor 2-alpha (HIF2-alpha) induces cell death in dormantlike/ starvation-resistant RCCs. This study s...

RAB39A is a Rab small GTPase that localizes at distinct subcellular compartments and regulates intracellular membrane trafficking pathways in vertebrate cells. RAB39A interacts with various molecules and modulates vesicular trafficking that regulates multiple biological pathways such as neuronal differentiation and/or autophagy. Among these pathway...

Gamma-glutamylcyclotransferase (GGCT) was originally identified as a protein highly expressed in bladder cancer tissues by proteomic analysis, and its higher expression in a variety of cancers compared to normal tissues have been shown. Depletion of GGCT in various cancer cells results in antiproliferative effects both in vitro and in vivo; thus it...

Previous studies show that gamma-glutamylcyclotransferase (GGCT) is expressed at high levels in various cancer tissues and that its knockdown inhibits MCF7 cancer cell growth via upregulation of p21Waf1/CIP1 (p21). However, the detailed underlying mechanism is unclear. Here, we used yeast two-hybrid screening and co-immunoprecipitation to identify...

In this study, we found that RAB39A, a member of the RAS oncogene family, was selectively expressed in cancer cells of different histotypes, by analyzing gene expression in human osteosarcoma cells and the cancer stem cells (CSCs) and by comparing them with normal cells through global transcriptomics and principal component analyses. We further val...

Aims/hypothesis: O-GlcNAcylation is characterised by the addition of N-acetylglucosamine to various proteins by O-GlcNAc transferase (OGT) and serves in sensing intracellular nutrients by modulating various cellular processes. Although it has been speculated that O-GlcNAcylation is associated with glucose metabolism, its exact role in whole body g...

Cancer-induced bone pain (CIBP) is common in patients with bone metastases (BM), significantly impairing quality of life. The current treatments for CIBP are limited since they are often ineffective. Local acidosis derived from glycolytic carcinoma and tumor-induced osteolysis is only barely explored cause of pain. We found that breast carcinoma ce...

Hypopharyngeal carcinoma is one of the worst prognostic malignancies among head and neck carcinomas. Therefore, a good biomarker should be identified to predict the best therapeutic option before starting the treatment. In cell models, p62/SQSTM1 levels affected the Nrf2-Keap1 pathway, ROS levels, GSH/GSSG ratios and cell growth, especially under i...

The stem cell fraction of a cell population is finely tuned by stimuli from the external microenvironment. Among these stimuli, a decrease of extracellular pH (pHe) may occur in a variety of physiological and pathological conditions, including hypoxia and inflammation. In this study, by using bone marrow stem cells and dental pulp stem cells, we pr...

The role of mesenchymal stem cells (MSC) in osteosarcoma (OS), the most common primary tumor of bone, has not been extensively elucidated. We have recently shown that OS is characterized by interstitial acidosis, a microenvironmental condition that is similar to a wound setting, in which mesenchymal reactive cells are activated to release mitogenic...

Dormant cancer cells are deprivation-resistant, and cause a number of problems for therapeutic approaches for cancers. Renal cell carcinomas (RCCs) include deprivation-resistant cells that are resistant to various treatments. In this study, the specific characteristics of deprivation-resistant cells were transcriptionally identified by next generat...

Current therapy of osteosarcoma (OS), the most common primary bone malignancy, is based on a combination of surgery and chemotherapy. Multidrug resistance mediated by P-glycoprotein (P-gp) overexpression has been previously associated with treatment failure and progression of OS, although other mechanisms may also play a role. We considered the typ...

The glycolytic-based metabolism of cancers promotes an acidic microenvironment that is responsible for increased aggressiveness. However, the effects of acidosis on tumour metabolism have been almost unexplored. By using capillary electrophoresis with time-of-flight mass spectrometry, we observed a significant metabolic difference associated with g...

Renal cell carcinomas (RCC) have two types of cells for carbon metabolism and for cell signaling under nutrient-deprivation conditions, namely starvation-resistant and starvation-sensitive cells. Here, we evaluated the mitochondrial characteristics of these cell types and found that the resistant type possessed higher activities for both mitochondr...

The characterization of cancer stem cell (CSC) subpopulation, through the comparison of the gene expression signature in respect to the native cancer cells, is particularly important for the identification of novel and more effective anticancer strategies. However, CSC have peculiar characteristics in terms of adhesion, growth, and metabolism that...

NormFinder, geNorm and CV ranking order of candidate reference genes in different histotypes of sarcoma and carcinoma. (DOC)

Determination of the minimal number of HKG by pairwise variation in 3 histotypes of sarcoma and 2 of carcinoma. (A) cscMG-63 and MG-63, (B) cscRD and RD, (C) cscA-673 and A-673, (D) cscES4540 and ES4540, (E) cscMDA-MB-231 and MDA-MB-231 and (F) cscACHN and ACHN. (TIF)

Autophagy is an intracellular degradation system activated, across species, by starvation. Although accumulating evidence has shown that mammalian autophagy is involved in pathogenesis of several modern diseases, its physiological role to combat starvation has not been fully clarified. In this study, we analysed starvation-induced gluconeogenesis a...

Dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) is an amphipathic molecule that is used as a solvent in biological studies and as a vehicle for drug therapy. The present study was designed to evaluate the potential effects of DMSO as a solvent in the treatment of testicular embryonal carcinomas (ECs). DMSO was applied to two human EC cell lines (NEC8 and NEC14), with th...

In the field of nanomedicine, nanoparticles with various functions are required for in vivo applications such as biomedical imaging and drug delivery. Therefore, chemical functionalization of nanoparticles has been extensively investigated. Herein, we report nanodiamond (ND) coated with polyglycerol (PG) and its derivatives to impart good solubilit...

On page 5348, N. Komatsu, X. Chen, and colleagues demonstrate multifunctional anticancer prodrug consisting of nanodiamond core, polyglycerol coating, targeting peptide and platinum-based drugs. The resulting good aqueous solubility, stealth nature, and targeting property enable the nanodiamond-based prodrug to be taken up selectively by cancer cel...