Abstract
Thyroid cancer is the most abundant tumor of the endocrine organs. Poorly differentiated thyroid cancer is still difficult to treat. Human cells exposed to long-term real (r-) and simulated (s-) microgravity (µg) revealed morphological alterations and changes in the expression profile of genes involved in several biological processes. The objective of this study was to examine the effects of short-term µg on poorly differentiated follicular thyroid cancer cells (FTC-133 cell line) resulting from 6 min of exposure to µg on a sounding rocket flight. As sounding rocket flights consist of several flight phases with different acceleration forces, rigorous control experiments are mandatory. Hypergravity (hyper-g) experiments were performed at 18g on a centrifuge in simulation of the rocket launch and s-µg was simulated by a random positioning machine (RPM). qPCR analyses of selected genes revealed no remarkable expression changes in controls as well as in hyper-g samples taken at the end of the first minute of launch. Using a centrifuge initiating 18g for 1 min, however, presented moderate gene expression changes, which were significant for COL1A1, VCL, CFL1, PTK2, IL6, CXCL8 and MMP14. We also identified a network of mutual interactions of the investigated genes and proteins by employing in-silico analyses. Lastly, µg-samples indicated that microgravity is a stronger regulator of gene expression than hyper-g.
Highlights
Thyroid cancer (TC) is one of the most abundant neoplasms of the endocrine organs [1]
The studies were done on the samples collected during the TX53 mission as described in [20] as well as on samples exposed to 18g hyper-g on a centrifuge, or cultured for 6-min of s-μg exposure on an random positioning machine (RPM)
We focused on the F-actin cytoskeleton, the extracellular matrix (ECM), focal adhesion, cell adhesion molecules, and cytokines
Summary
Thyroid cancer (TC) is one of the most abundant neoplasms of the endocrine organs [1]. Thyroid carcinomas are malignant tumors of the thyroid gland and are classified into differentiated TC (papillary TC, follicular TC and Hürthle cell cancer), medullary TC; and anaplastic TC. Thyroid cells as well as differentiated TC cells are capable of taking up iodine [2]. When radioactive iodine (RAI; 131I) is given, it concentrates in the thyroid. The radiation will destroy the thyroid gland and any other benign and malignant thyroid cells. RAI-treatment is used to ablate any thyroid tissue in the organism. Undifferentiated TC cells lost the ability to take up iodine which increases the need to find new therapeutically valuable treatments [3], for example by targeting tumor angiogenesis [2,4]
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