COPD AND lung cancer AND microenvironment

Alveoli serve as the functional units of the lungs, responsible for the critical task of blood-gas exchange. Comprising type I (AT1) and type II (AT2) cells, the alveolar epithelium is continuously subject to external aggressors like pathogens and airborne particles. As such, preserving lung function requires both the homeostatic renewal and reparative regeneration of this epithelial layer. Dysfunctions in these processes contribute to various lung diseases. Recent research has pinpointed specific cell subgroups that act as potential stem or progenitor cells for the alveolar epithelium during both homeostasis and regeneration...

The interplay between the immune system and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is complex and multifaceted. In COPD, chronic inflammation and oxidative stress can lead to immune dysfunction that can exacerbate lung damage, further worsening the respiratory symptoms. In NSCLC, immune cells can recognise and attack the cancer cells, which, however, can evade or suppress the immune response by various mechanisms, such as expressing immune checkpoint proteins or secreting immunosuppressive cytokines, thus creating an immunosuppressive tumour microenvironment that promotes cancer progression and metastasis...

Pulmonary diseases like asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder, lung fibrosis, and lung cancer pose a significant burden to global human health. Many of these complications arise as a result of exposure to particulate matter (PM), which has been examined in several preclinical and clinical trials for its effect on several respiratory diseases. Particulate matter of size less than 2.5 μm (PM2.5 ) has been known to inflict unforeseen repercussions, although data from epidemiological studies to back this are pending...

Cigarette smoke is widely known as contributing to chronic inflammation underlying several airway diseases, such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung cancer. In our previous studies we found that the lung of both COPD and cancer patients were characterized by the presence and activation of the AIM2 inflammasome. Here, we wanted to investigate the upstream step during the establishment of chronic lung inflammation after cigarette smoke exposure. We took advantage of a mouse model of smoking exposure and public scRNAseq data...

The accumulation of senescent cells drives inflammaging and increases morbidity of chronic inflammatory lung diseases. Immune responses are built upon dynamic changes in cell metabolism that supply energy and substrates for cell proliferation, differentiation, and activation. Metabolic changes imposed by environmental stress and inflammation on immune cells and tissue microenvironment are thus chiefly involved in the pathophysiology of allergic and other immune-driven diseases. Altered cell metabolism is also a hallmark of cell senescence, a condition characterized by loss of proliferative activity in cells that remain metabolically active...

The lungs are important organs that play a critical role in the development of specific diseases, as well as responding to the effects of drugs, chemicals, and environmental pollutants. Due to the ethical concerns around animal testing, alternative methods have been sought which are more time-effective, do not pose ethical issues for animals, do not involve species differences, and provide easy investigation of the pathobiology of lung diseases. Several national and international organizations are working to accelerate the development and implementation of structurally and functionally complex tissue models as alternatives to animal testing, particularly for the lung...

BACKGROUND: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung cancer are leading causes of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Studies have reported molecular alterations in patients with lung cancer and in patients with COPD. However, few investigation has been conducted on the molecular characteristics of lung cancer patients with COPD. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We performed a retrospective cohort study that included 435 patients with pathologically confirmed lung cancer at the Ruijin Hospital...

INTRODUCTION: Toll-like receptors (TLRs) are an extensive group of proteins involved in host defense processes that express themselves upon the increased production of endogenous damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs) and pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) due to the constant contact that airway epithelium may have with pathogenic foreign antigens. We have previously shown that COPD-like airway inflammation induced by exposure to an aerosolized lysate of nontypeable Haemophilus influenzae (NTHi) promotes tumorigenesis in a K-ras mutant mouse model of lung cancer, CCSPCre /LSL-K-rasG12D (CC-LR) mouse...

Oxidative stress and inflammation induced by cigarette smoking are associated with the pathology process of various chronic respiratory diseases, including asthma, emphysema, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and cancer. Compared with conventional cell culture techniques, microfluidic chips can provide a continuous nutrient supply, mimic the in vivo physiological microenvironment of the cells, and conduct an integrated and flexible analysis of cell status and functions. Here, we designed and fabricated a bionic-lung chip, which was applied to perform cigarette smoke exposure of BEAS-2B cells cultured at the gas-liquid interface...

Non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is one of the deadliest diseases worldwide and represents an impending burden on the healthcare system. Despite increasing attention, the mechanisms underlying tumorigenesis in cancer-related diseases such as COPD remain unclear, making novel biomarkers necessary to improve lung cancer early diagnosis. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are short non-coding RNA that interfere with several pathways and can act as oncogenes or tumor suppressors. This study aimed to compare miRNA lung expression between subjects with NSCLC and COPD and healthy controls to obtain the miRNA expression profile by analyzing shared pathways...

Lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) often co-occur, and individuals with COPD are at a higher risk of developing lung cancer. While the underlying mechanism for this risk is not well understood, its major contributing factors have been proposed to include genomic, immune, and microenvironment dysregulation. Here, we review the evidence and significant studies that explore the mechanisms underlying the heightened lung cancer risk in people with COPD. Genetic and epigenetic changes, as well as the aberrant expression of non-coding RNAs, predispose the lung epithelium to carcinogenesis by altering the expression of cancer- and immune-related genes...

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) represents an independent risk factor for lung cancer development. Accelerated cell senescence, induced by oxidative stress and inflammation, is a common pathogenic determinant of both COPD and lung cancer. The post transcriptional regulation of genes involved in these processes is finely regulated by RNA-binding proteins (RBPs), which regulate mRNA turnover, subcellular localization, splicing and translation. Multiple pro-inflammatory mediators (including cytokines, chemokines, proteins, growth factors and others), responsible of lung microenvironment alteration, are regulated by RBPs...

Lung cancer (LC) and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are two of the most fatal respiratory diseases, seriously threatening human health and imposing a heavy burden on families and society. Although COPD is a significant independent risk factor for LC, it is still unclear how COPD affects the prognosis of LC patients, especially when LC patients with COPD receive immunotherapy. With the development of immune checkpoint inhibition (ICI) therapy, an increasing number of inhibitors of programmed cell death-1 (PD-1) and PD-1 ligand (PD-L1) have been applied to the treatment of LC...

The 2022 Annual Review Issue of The Journal of Pathology, Recent Advances in Pathology, contains 15 invited reviews on research areas of growing importance in pathology. This year, the articles include those that focus on digital pathology, employing modern imaging techniques and software to enable improved diagnostic and research applications to study human diseases. This subject area includes the ability to identify specific genetic alterations through the morphological changes they induce, as well as integrating digital and computational pathology with 'omics technologies...

Background: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is an inflammatory-related disease highly associated with increased lung cancer risk. Studies have explored the tumor promoting roles for zinc finger protein 143 (ZNF143). However, the role of ZNF143 in COPD and tumor microenvironment of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) has not been fully elucidated. Methods: COPD-related key genes were identified by differential gene expression evaluation, WGCNA and SVM-RFE analysis using mRNA expression data retrieved from public databases...

Despite the increasing urgency of the problem of treating small cell lung cancer (SCLC), information on the causes of its development is fragmentary. There is no complete understanding of the features of antitumor immunity and the role of the microenvironment in the development of SCLC resistance. This impedes the development of new methods for the diagnosis and treatment of SCLC. Lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) have common pathogenetic factors. COPD is a risk factor for lung cancer including SCLC...

The lungs play a very important role in the human respiratory system. However, many factors can destroy the structure of the lung, causing several lung diseases and, often, serious damage to people's health. Nerve growth factor (NGF) is a polypeptide which is widely expressed in lung tissues. Under different microenvironments, NGF participates in the occurrence and development of lung diseases by changing protein expression levels and mediating cell function. In this review, we summarize the functions of NGF as well as some potential underlying mechanisms in pulmonary fibrosis (PF), coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19), pulmonary hypertension (PH), asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and lung cancer...

Exosomes are released from a variety of immune cells and nonimmune cells, the phospholipid vesicle bilayer membrane structure actively secreted into tissues. Recently, exosomes were demonstrated to be effectively delivered proteins, cholesterol, lipids, and amounts of DNA, mRNA, and noncoding RNAs to a target cell or tissue from a host cell. These can be detected in blood, urine, exhaled breath condensates, bronchoalveolar lavage fluid (BALF), ascites, and cerebrospinal fluid. BALF is a clinical examination method for obtaining alveolar cells and biochemical components, reflecting changes in the lungs, so it is also called liquid biopsy...

It has long been recognized that cigarette smoking is a shared risk factor for lung cancer and the debilitating lung disease, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). As the severity of COPD increases, so does the risk for developing lung cancer, independently of pack years smoked. Neutrophilic inflammation increases with COPD severity and anti-inflammatories such as non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) can modulate neutrophil function and cancer risk. This review discusses the biology of tumour associated neutrophils (TANs) in lung cancer, which increase in density with tumour progression, particularly in smokers with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC)...

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), the frequently fatal pathology of the respiratory tract, accounts for half a billion cases globally. COPD manifests via chronic inflammatory response to irritants, frequently to tobacco smoke. The progression of COPD from early onset to advanced disease leads to the loss of the alveolar wall, pulmonary hypertension, and fibrosis of the respiratory epithelium. Here, we focus on the epidemiology, progression, and biomarkers of COPD with a particular connection to lung cancer...