피부는 신체에서 가장 크고 육중한 기관 중 하나로 인간의 생리 및 병리 과정에 참여한다. 피부는 자기 유지 및 치유, 기계적 및 화학적 손상 방어, 자외선 과 외부 병원성 미생물로부터의 방어, 비타민 D 합성 그리고 사회 심리적 기능을 한다고 알려져 있다. 이 연구의 목적은 한국 여성의 부위와 연령에 따라 피부 생물학 인자와 연관된 생물리학 인자의 변화를 평가하는 데 있다. 20 ∼ 49세의 약 70명의 건강한 성인 여성이 이 실험에 참여 하였다. 측정부위는 하박 내측과 뺨으로 진행하였다. 인체 피부의 생물리학 인자를 측정하기 위하여 여러 가지 비침습적인 방법으로 진행하였다. 피부의 생물학 인자를 분석하기 위하여 코티졸, 파이브로넥틴, 케라틴-1, 10, 11, 인보루크린, 케라틴 6를 인체의 얼굴과 하박내측으로 비교하였다. 또한 비침습적 방법으로 피부 생물리학 인자는 피부 부위와 연령에 따른 차이를 측정하였다. 측정 부위에 따른 결과, 각질층 수분량, 경피수분손실량과 피부색(L과 a값)은 유의적인 차이가 나타났다. 연령에 따른 결과, 오직 피부색에서만 연령에 따른 차이가 유의 적으로 나타났다. 코티졸, 케라틴-6, 파이브로넥틴, 케라틴-1, 10, 11 은 연령과 부위간 유의적 차이가 없지만 인볼루크린은 30 ∼ 39세 연령대에서 다른 연령대보다 유의적으로 가장 높았다. 이러한 결과는 개인의 피부 환경에 대한 상세한 피부 상태 변화로 설명할 수 있을 것이다.

Prognosis and diagnosis of male fertility is a most important for animal breeding system and human reproduction. Conventional semen analysis generally provides information on the quantitative parameters of spermatozoa, but yields no information concerning its functional competence. Thus, new methods for diagnosis and prognosis of male fertility will need to be developed to ensure more accurate assessments. Proteomics have used to find candidate biomarkers for male fertility, but the relationship between the proteome and fertility was not fully understood. Therefore, we performed a comprehensive proteomic approach to investigate small and large litter size boar spermatozoa and identify proteins related to negative male fertility. In present study, 20 proteins showed differential expression levels in small and large litter size groups. Nineteen of these proteins were abundantly expressed in the small litter group. Interestingly, only one protein was highly expressed in the large litter size spermatozoa. We then identified signaling pathways associated with the differentially expressed protein markers. Glutathione S-transferase Mu3 and glutathione peroxidase 4 were related to the glutathione metabolic pathway and arginine vasopressin receptor 2 was linked to vasopressin R2/STAT. Taken together, our results suggest that identified negative fertility-related biomarkers may be used as negative biomarkers for the detection of inferior male fertility such as sub-fertility or infertility.

Ovarian cancer is the most fetal gynecological malignancy leading cause of cancer-related deaths in women worldwide. Diagnosis of ovarian cancer is hard at an early stage when 90% of patients can be cure due to lack of symptom and early detection markers. Therefore, most of patients with this disease are detected at advanced stage (Stage Ⅲ-Ⅳ) occurring low survival rate (< 30%). More than 90% of ovarian carcinomas are originated from ovarian surface epithelium and it is called as epithelial-derived ovarian cancer (EOC). Recently, previous studies have been showed ovarian cancer could arise from oviduct and oviduct-related genes are up-regulated in hen EOC, the most relevant animal model. Therefore, the objectives of this study were to determine: 1) the distribution and localization of oviduct developmental-regulatory genes including A2M, GAL11, SERPINB3, SERPINB11 and SPP1 in normal and cancerous ovaries of laying hens; 2) the expression pattern of target genes among normal and cancerous ovarian cells of hens and human ovarian cancer cell lines; and 3) the functional role of target gene in human EOC. Results of the present study showed five genes were abundant only in the glandular epithelium of cancerous ovaries of hens. And SERPINB3 was abundant in the nucleus of both chicken and human ovarian cancer cells whereas SERPINB11 was abundant in the cytoplasm. Further, several microRNAs were discovered to influence SERPINB3, GAL11 and SPP1 expression via their 3’-UTR which suggest that post-transcriptional regulation influences target gene expression in chickens. Moreover, in 109 human patients with EOC, 15 (13.8%), 66 (60.6%) and 28 (25.7%) patients showed weak, moderate and strong expression of SERPINB3 protein, respectively. Strong expression of SERPINB3 protein was a prognostic factor for platinum resistance, and for poor progression-free survival. Therefore, oviduct developmental-regulatory genes, especially SERPINB3, may play an important role in ovarian carcinogenesis and be a novel biomarker for predicting platinum resistance and a poor prognosis for survival in patients with EOC.

MFG-E8 (Milk fat globule-epidermal growth factor VIII), also called lactadherin or BA46, SED1 is a glycoprotein found in milk and mammary epithelial cells, it is a major protein component associated with milk fat globule membrane. Previously, our study showed that expression of MFG-E8 is gradually increased with hepatic differentiation of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs). Therefore, we hypothesized that MFG-E8 would be an early cancer stem cell marker, which may predict cancer progression. Our results showed that MFG-E8 was expressed in various human cancer cell lines such as HepG2, Hep3B, and Huh7. Production and secretion of the MFG-E8 were also confirmed in the conditioned media of those three cell lines using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Next, we analyzed the MFG-E8 expression in 11 clinical cases of cholangiocellular carcinoma (CC) and 33 cases of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) by immunohistochemistry and examined the potential correlation with β-catenin and AFP, which are known cancer markers. According to hitological criteria, the progression of HCC and CC was evaluated and classified into high, low, metastatic, and well-, moderate-, poor-differentiated, respectively. Statistical analysis indicated that incidence of both HCC and CC is significantly associated with male compared to female (P<0.05). Tumor size also has positive correlation with age (r2=08948). Our immunohistochemistry data showed that MFG-E8 was expressed both HCC and CC tissue. Interestingly, the MFG-E8 expression was significantly increased with cancer progression (P<0.05) in both cases. Additionally, b-cateninexpression was increased and its localization was changed from membrane to cytoplasm and nucleus with the degree of HCC. Likely b-catenin, AFP was also increased with the degree of HCC but it was not correlated with severalty of CC. Importantly, both AFP and b-catenin were highly co-localized with MFG-E8 in HCC. These results suggest that MFG-E8 may have important physiological roles and its expression in HCC and CC would be considered as an important prognostic factor.