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Characterization and regulatory mechanism evaluation of C8orf33 in hepatocellular carcinoma through multiomics profiling

Discov Oncol. 2026 Apr 11. doi: 10.1007/s12672-026-04951-z. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a major cause of cancer-related mortality. Chromosome 8 open reading frame 33 (C8orf33) has been noted as a potential oncogenic factor in several cancers, but its biological roles and regulatory mechanism in HCC microenvironment remain unknown.

METHODS: We integrated bulk RNA sequencing, single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq), and spatial transcriptomics (ST) to characterize the expression landscape of C8orf33. We then performed C8orf33 loss-of-function studies in HCC cell lines, including in vitro phenotypic assays and subcutaneous xenografts.

RESULTS: C8orf33 was broadly overexpressed and associated with unfavorable prognosis across multiple Cancers. In HCC, higher C8orf33 aligned with advanced stage and shorter overall survival. C8orf33 knockdown reduced proliferation and migration, impaired tumorigenic capacity, and increased apoptosis. ScRNA-seq analyses identified a malignant population of Epi3 with high C8orf33 expression. Cell-cell communication analysis suggested that C8orf33-high Epi3 state was associated with an enriched MIF-CD74/CXCR4/CD44 signaling program toward macrophage populations with M2-like features. ST analyses further confirmed the colocalization of C8orf33 with malignant features in tumor cores. In Huh7 cells, C8orf33 knockdown was accompanied by reduced mRNA and protein levels of MIF and its receptor components. Consistently, xenografts derived from C8orf33-silenced cells showed lower expression of these MIF-axis components and reduced infiltration of CD163 and CD206-positive macrophages.

CONCLUSION: These results support a tumor-promoting association of C8orf33 in HCC and suggest a potential link to macrophage-associated immunomodulatory features, nominating C8orf33 as a candidate biomarker and therapeutic target.

PMID:41965457 | DOI:10.1007/s12672-026-04951-z

Characterization and regulatory mechanism evaluation of C8orf33 in hepatocellular carcinoma through multiomics profiling

Discov Oncol. 2026 Apr 11. doi: 10.1007/s12672-026-04951-z. Online ahead of print.

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND: Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a major cause of cancer-related mortality. Chromosome 8 open reading frame 33 (C8orf33) has been noted as a potential oncogenic factor in several cancers, but its biological roles and regulatory mechanism in HCC microenvironment remain unknown.

METHODS: We integrated bulk RNA sequencing, single-cell RNA sequencing (scRNA-seq), and spatial transcriptomics (ST) to characterize the expression landscape of C8orf33. We then performed C8orf33 loss-of-function studies in HCC cell lines, including in vitro phenotypic assays and subcutaneous xenografts.

RESULTS: C8orf33 was broadly overexpressed and associated with unfavorable prognosis across multiple Cancers. In HCC, higher C8orf33 aligned with advanced stage and shorter overall survival. C8orf33 knockdown reduced proliferation and migration, impaired tumorigenic capacity, and increased apoptosis. ScRNA-seq analyses identified a malignant population of Epi3 with high C8orf33 expression. Cell-cell communication analysis suggested that C8orf33-high Epi3 state was associated with an enriched MIF-CD74/CXCR4/CD44 signaling program toward macrophage populations with M2-like features. ST analyses further confirmed the colocalization of C8orf33 with malignant features in tumor cores. In Huh7 cells, C8orf33 knockdown was accompanied by reduced mRNA and protein levels of MIF and its receptor components. Consistently, xenografts derived from C8orf33-silenced cells showed lower expression of these MIF-axis components and reduced infiltration of CD163 and CD206-positive macrophages.

CONCLUSION: These results support a tumor-promoting association of C8orf33 in HCC and suggest a potential link to macrophage-associated immunomodulatory features, nominating C8orf33 as a candidate biomarker and therapeutic target.

PMID:41965457 | DOI:10.1007/s12672-026-04951-z

  • ✇Nature Cancer
  • Harnessing foundation models for digital pathology without re-training Zhiping Xiao · Sheng Wang
    Nature Cancer, Published online: 03 April 2026; doi:10.1038/s43018-025-01108-9Applications of digital pathology in clinical oncology have largely depended on the requirement for labeled data and model re-training. A study now presents PRET, a training-free framework with robust performance for pan-cancer diagnosis that adapts pathology foundation models to diverse tasks at inference stage, from screening and subtyping tasks to segmentation and metastasis detection tasks.
     

Harnessing foundation models for digital pathology without re-training

3 April 2026 at 08:00

Nature Cancer, Published online: 03 April 2026; doi:10.1038/s43018-025-01108-9

Applications of digital pathology in clinical oncology have largely depended on the requirement for labeled data and model re-training. A study now presents PRET, a training-free framework with robust performance for pan-cancer diagnosis that adapts pathology foundation models to diverse tasks at inference stage, from screening and subtyping tasks to segmentation and metastasis detection tasks.

Adaptation of Agentic AI: A Survey of Post-Training, Memory, and Skills

arXiv:2512.16301v3 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Large language model (LLM) agents are moving beyond prompting alone. ChatGPT marked the rise of general-purpose LLM assistants, DeepSeek showed that on-policy reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards can improve reasoning and tool use, and OpenClaw highlights a newer direction in which agents accumulate persistent memory and reusable skills. Yet the research landscape remains fragmented across post-training, retrieval, memory, and skill systems. This survey studies these developments under a single notion of \emph{adaptation}: improving an agent, its tools, or their interaction after pretraining. We organize the field with a four-paradigm framework spanning agent adaptation and tool adaptation. On the agent side, A1 (tool-execution-signaled) and A2 (agent-output-signaled) improve the agent itself through supervised fine-tuning, preference optimization, and reinforcement learning with verifiable rewards. On the tool side, T1 (agent-agnostic) provides reusable pre-trained modules any agent can call, while T2 (agent-supervised) uses the agent's outputs to train memory systems, skill libraries, or lightweight subagents. Using this framework, we review post-training methods, adaptive memory architectures, and agent skills; compare their trade-offs in cost, flexibility, and generalization; and summarize evaluation practices across deep research, software development, computer use, and drug discovery. We conclude by outlining open problems in agent-tool co-adaptation, continual learning, safety, and efficient deployment.

ConEQsA: Concurrent and Asynchronous Embodied Questions Scheduling and Answering

arXiv:2509.11663v2 Announce Type: replace-cross Abstract: This paper formulates the Embodied Questions Answering (EQsA) problem, introduces a corresponding benchmark, and proposes an agentic system to tackle the problem. Classical Embodied Question Answering (EQA) is typically formulated as answering one single question by actively exploring a 3D environment. Real deployments, however, often demand handling multiple questions that may arrive asynchronously and carry different urgencies. We formalize this setting as Embodied Questions Answering (EQsA) and present ConEQsA, an agentic framework for concurrent, urgency-aware scheduling and answering. ConEQsA leverages shared group memory to reduce redundant exploration, and a priority-planning method to dynamically schedule questions. To evaluate the EQsA setting fairly, we contribute the Concurrent Asynchronous Embodied Questions (CAEQs) benchmark containing 40 indoor scenes and five questions per scene (200 in total), featuring asynchronous follow-up questions and human-annotated urgency labels. We further propose metrics for EQsA performance: Direct Answer Rate (DAR), and Normalized Urgency-Weighted Latency (NUWL), which serve as a fair evaluation protocol for EQsA. Empirical evaluations demonstrate that ConEQsA consistently outperforms strong sequential baselines, and show that urgency-aware, concurrent scheduling is key to making embodied agents responsive and efficient under realistic, multi-question workloads. Code is available on https://anonymous.4open.science/r/ConEQsA.

ToolSelf: Unifying Task Execution and Self-Reconfiguration via Tool-Driven Intrinsic Adaptation

arXiv:2602.07883v2 Announce Type: replace Abstract: Agentic systems powered by Large Language Models (LLMs) have demonstrated remarkable potential in tackling complex, long-horizon tasks. However, their efficacy is fundamentally constrained by static configurations governing agent behaviors, which are fixed prior to execution and fail to adapt to evolving task dynamics. Existing approaches, relying on manual orchestration or heuristic-based patches, often struggle with poor generalization and fragmented optimization. To transcend these limitations, we propose ToolSelf, a novel paradigm enabling tool-driven runtime self-reconfiguration. By abstracting configuration updates as a callable tool, ToolSelf unifies task execution and self-adjustment into a single action space, achieving a phase transition from external rules to intrinsic parameters. Agents can thereby autonomously update their sub-goals and context based on task progression, and correspondingly adapt their strategy and toolbox, transforming from passive executors into dual managers of both task and self. We further devise Configuration-Aware Two-stage Training (CAT), combining rejection sampling fine-tuning with trajectory-level reinforcement learning to internalize this meta-capability. Extensive experiments across diverse benchmarks demonstrate that ToolSelf rivals specialized workflows while generalizing to novel tasks, achieving a 24.1% average performance gain and illuminating a path toward truly self-adaptive agents.
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