October 5, 2006, 9:58 PM CT
Tumor Suppressor Promoteing Cancer Cell Growth?
Researchers have shown that the tumor suppressor gene H-REV107-1 may actually stimulate tumor progression in some non-small cell lung carcinomas. The related report by Nazarenko et al., "H-REV107-1 stimulates growth in non-small cell lung carcinomas via the activation of mitogenic signaling," appears in the recent issue of The American Journal of Pathology.
Tumor suppressor genes function by regulating normal cell growth and proliferation. When a tumor suppressor gene is turned off, by mutation, deletion, or blocked expression, cell growth can proceed without safeguards, contributing to cancer cell proliferation. However, this appears not to be the case in some non-small cell lung carcinomas (NSCLC), in which a tumor suppressor (H-REV107-1) actually promotes cancer cell growth.
Nazarenko et al. found H-REV107-1 expression in a portion of human NSCLC samples examined. When they further characterized this expression in relation to normal lung tissue, H-REV107-1 was found in nonproliferating and proliferating cells in normal lung tissue, localized mainly to the nucleus. In cultured NSCLC cells, however, H-REV107-1 was found in either the cytoplasm or both the cytoplasm and nucleus.
The group then examined whether cellular localization of H-REV107-1 in NSCLC tumor samples is linked with tumor behavior. Strikingly, cytoplasmic localization correlated with decreased patient survival (24 months versus 41 months for nuclear localization). These data suggested that cytoplasmic H-REV107-1 stimulates cell growth. This was then confirmed by suppression of H-REV107-1 RNA, which inhibited cell proliferation, and overexpression of H-REV107-1 protein, which stimulated cell growth pathways and increased proliferation.........
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October 3, 2006, 10:23 PM CT
New Fodder For The Next Clean Air Fight
New research from researchers at Harvard University measured secondhand tobacco smoke in cars and found pollution levels that are likely hazardous to children.
"The levels were above the threshold for what's considered unhealthy for sensitive groups -- people like children and the elderly -- as determined by the Environmental Protection Agency," said lead study author Vaughan Rees, Ph.D., a research associate at the Harvard School of Public Health.
During 45 driving trials, the scientists strapped a pollution monitor into a child-safety seat, and then asked a smoker-volunteer to light up at different times along the near hour-long route. The road tests were conducted under two different ventilation conditions: all car windows rolled down, then with just the driver's side window cracked about two inches.
"Common sense tells you if you smoke in a pretty confined space, such as a car, without ventilation, there's going to be a lot of secondhand smoke which is potentially dangerous," said Rees.
He added, "Before this study we had no idea what sorts of levels of secondhand smoke were generated. And we had no way of comparing that with other studies that have looked at secondhand smoke levels in other indoor environments like bars and restaurants".........
Posted by: Andria Permalink Source
October 3, 2006, 10:17 PM CT
Links Between Drugs And Human Disease
A research team led by scientists at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard has developed a new kind of genetic "roadmap" that can connect human diseases with potential drugs to treat them, as well as predict how new drugs work in human cells.
Called the "Connectivity Map," the new tool and its uses are described in the Sept. 29 issue of Science and in separate papers in the Sept. 28 early edition of Cancer Cell.
The three papers show the map's ability to accurately predict the molecular actions of novel therapeutic compounds and to suggest new applications for existing drugs. Based on these initial results, the researchers propose a public project to expand the Connectivity Map--in the spirit of the Human Genome Project--to accelerate the search for new drugs to treat disease.
"The Connectivity Map works much like a Google search to discover connections among drugs and diseases," said senior author Todd Golub, the director of the Broad Institute's cancer program, an investigator at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, an associateprofessor of pediatrics at Harvard Medical School, and an investigator at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. "These connections are notoriously difficult to find, in part because drugs and diseases are characterized in completely different scientific languages".........
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October 2, 2006, 9:18 PM CT
Drug for cancer may cause exposed bone in jaw
A type of drug used to strengthen bones when cancer has spread there may be associated with a side effect that involves deterioration of the jaw bone, as per two new reviews of cancer literature. The condition, called osteonecrosis of the jaw, is marked by exposed bone in the jaw and can lead to infection, inflammation and pain.
While scientists do not fully understand the condition or what causes it, osteonecrosis of the jaw, or ONJ, appears to occur in individuals who have been treated with drugs called bisphosphonates, which are used to improve bone strength. When treating bone affected by cancer, the bisphosphonates are given intravenously and have been shown to decrease the risk of skeletal complications such as fracture.
"Osteonecrosis of the jaw is not a common condition. It appears to occur in 1 percent to 10 percent of patients with advanced cancer who are on intravenous bisphosphonate treatment a number significant enough that most medical oncologists will see patients with this condition. It is important that scientists learn why it occurs and how best to prevent or treat it," says Catherine Van Poznak, M.D., assistant professor of internal medicine at the University of Michigan Medical School.
Van Poznak has authored two recent reviews of osteonecrosis of the jaw. One study appears in the recent issue of Current Opinions in Orthopaedics. The other was published in August in the journal Oncology. Both papers synthesize the present data for an overview of what is known to date about this recently identified complication.........
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October 1, 2006, 8:04 PM CT
Researchers Stop Colon Cancer
Researchers from Texas were able to stop the growth of colon cancer in mice by blocking just one enzyme. They say that this is a big step against conquering cancer. Even though this was an experiment on mice, these researchers hope that their findings might soon find its way to human cancers including colon cancer.
In cell culture experiments, scientists from the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston (UTMB) and the University of Texas at Arlington determined that stopping the activity of a single enzyme called aldose reductase could shut down the toxic network of biochemical signals that promotes inflammation and colon cancer cell growth.
In a dramatic demonstration of the potential of this discovery, they followed up this work with animal studies showing that blocking the production of aldose reductase halted the growth of human colon cancer cells implanted in laboratory mice.
"By inhibiting aldose reductase we were able to completely stop the further growth of colorectal cancer tumor cells," said UTMB professor Satish K. Srivastava, senior author of a paper about the discovery to be published Oct. 1 in the journal Cancer Research.
According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, colon cancer is the country's second leading cancer killer. In 2002, the most recent year for which statistics are available, 70,651 men and 68,883 women were diagnosed with colon cancer in the United States; 28,471 men and 28,132 women died from the disease.........
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October 1, 2006, 7:29 PM CT
An Antibiotic That Stops Cancer
Have you ever heard of antibiotic called siomycin A? Probably not, but this antibiotic might find a place in the fight against cancer. At least that's what the researchers say.
This little-known antibiotic, siomycin A shows early promise as an anti-cancer agent, inhibiting a gene found at higher-than-normal levels in most human tumors, according to researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago College of Medicine.
Their findings are reported in the lastest issue of Cancer Research.
"We chose to target a gene believed to be over-expressed in cancer cells to screen for promising anti-cancer agents," said Andrei Gartel, assistant professor of medicine and of microbiology and immunology at UIC and principal investigator on the study.
The FoxM1 gene is responsible for turning on genes needed for cell proliferation and turning off genes that block proliferation. Uncontrolled proliferation is characteristic of cancer cells.
The researchers developed a new screening system, based on a naturally fluorescent protein called luciferase, to identify small molecules that inhibit proteins that turn genes on and off. Using this system, they identified an antibiotic, siomycin A, that specifically targets FoxM1 without affecting other cell functions.........
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September 28, 2006, 9:57 PM CT
Radiofreqency Ablation For Ovarian Cancer
Percutaneous radiofrequency ablation, a procedure that uses a high frequency electric current to kill tumor cells, is effective in achieving local control in selected patients with metastasis from ovarian cancer, according to a preliminary study conducted by the department of radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, MA.
The study consisted of six patients with advanced ovarian cancer who underwent radiofrequency ablation to destroy disease that had spread to the liver. "Some studies have shown that patients with advanced ovarian cancer can survive longer if they have repeated surgery to remove recurrent or new disease," said Debra Gervais, MD, lead author of the study. "We wanted to see if we could use radiofrequency ablation instead of repeated open surgical resection for some of these patients," she said.
The study found that, "after a single session, radiofreqency ablation resulted in complete necrosis" in five of the six patients, said Dr. Gervais. "We followed the patients for between eight months and 3.3 years, and four of the five patients had no evidence that the cancer in the area that had been destroyed by radiofrequency ablation had returned," she said.
"Treatment of ovarian cancer requires multi-modality approaches including surgery and chemotherapy, but our study indicates that a small number of patients may benefit from radiofrequency ablation instead of repeated surgery," she said.........
Posted by: Andria Permalink Source
September 28, 2006, 9:37 PM CT
Anti-angiogenesis To Fight Cancer
Image courtesy of Biovita
A researcher at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health has discovered a new part of the complicated mechanism that governs the formation of blood vessels, or angiogenesis.
The finding may help halt tumor growth in cancer patients, says Emery Bresnick, the senior author on the study, a professor of pharmacology and member of the UW-Madison Paul P. Carbone Comprehensive Cancer Center.
The research, reported in the Journal of Cell Biology on Sept. 25, is the first to connect a particular nervous-system chemical to the regulation of blood vessels.
Normally, blood vessels form when wounds heal and during menstruation, pregnancy and fetal development. But impaired blood-vessel development and function are also a major cause of blindness, and tumors rely on new blood vessels as they develop.
Like most critical body processes, angiogenesis is tightly controlled by multiple balancing mechanisms. When Bresnick and his colleagues, including postdoctoral fellow Soumen Paul, began the new study, they were not looking into angiogenesis. Instead, they were studying a protein that regulates the maturation of blood cells, and noticed that it turns on a gene that makes a compound called neurokinin-B, or NK-B.
Aware that NK-B affects cells in the nervous system, Bresnick wondered, "Why would a protein involved in blood-cell formation turn on the gene for a compound that is supposedly involved in regulating the nervous system?".........
Posted by: Andria Permalink Source
September 27, 2006, 6:50 PM CT
IMRT Cures Prostate Cancer
Results from the largest study of men with prostate cancer treated with high-dose, intensity modulated radiation treatment (IMRT) show that the majority of patients remain alive with no evidence of disease after an average follow-up period of eight years. The 561 patients with prostate cancer treated with IMRT at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center were classified into prognostic risk groups. After an average of eight years, 89 percent of the men in the favorable risk group were disease-free and none of the men in any group developed secondary cancers as a result of the radiation treatment. This report, reported in the October 2006 issue of The Journal of Urology, is the first description of long-term outcomes for patients with prostate cancer using IMRT.
"Our results suggest that IMRT should be the therapy of choice for delivering high-dose, external beam radiotherapy for patients with localized prostate cancer," said Dr. Michael J. Zelefsky, Chief of the Brachytherapy Service at Memorial Sloan-Kettering. "We were able to show long-term safety and long-term efficacy in a very diverse group of patients with prostate cancer that we followed a number of for as long as ten years. Despite the fact that some patients had an aggressive form of their disease with high Gleason scores and PSA (prostate specific antigen) levels, the overwhelming majority of patients had good tumor control with neither recurrence of their original cancer nor development of second cancers, which one might have expected from the high doses of radiation," he added.........
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September 26, 2006, 7:44 PM CT
Pink SatNav For Female Drivers
If you think, you can guide your own way without a GPS unit with you then this CarTrek 400s Hot Pink SatNav might hook you into getting one for your Pink VW Beetle. This hot pink GPS Navigation System features an LCD touchscreen and it features NavTech technology and maps, which cover the whole of Europe.
The SatNav unit even tells you about points of interests along your route. And, with the plug-n-play simplicity, its an easy candy to deal with! The cutie pink unit sells for pounds 249.........
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