Previous studies have established that higher birthweight is associated with increased risk of breast cancer. However, the mechanisms underlying this association remain unclear. We explored whether maternal pregnancy weight gain and pre-pregnancy body mass index (BMI), which influence birthweight, are associated with risk of breast cancer in offspring. »
05/20/11

Castration-resistance in prostate cancer (PC) is a critical event hallmarking a switch to a more aggressive phenotype. Neuroendocrine differentiation and upregulation of NFkappaB transcriptional activity are two mechanisms that have been independently linked to this process. »
05/15/11

Breast cancer is one of the most prevalent cancers in the world and more than one million women are diagnosed leading to 410,000 deaths every year. In our previous studies new chalcone-imidazolone conjugates were prepared and evaluated for their anticancer activity in a panel of 53 human tumor cell lines and the lead compounds identified were 6 and 8. This prompted us to investigate the mechanism of apoptotic event. »
04/25/11

There are currently three postulated genomic subtypes of the childhood tumour neuroblastoma (NB); Type 1, Type 2A, and Type 2B. The most aggressive forms of NB are characterized by amplification of the oncogene MYCN (MNA) and low expression of the favourable marker NTRK1. Recently, mutations or high expression of the familial predisposition gene Anaplastic Lymphoma Kinase (ALK) was associated to unfavourable biology of sporadic NB. Also, various other genes have been linked to NB pathogenesis. »
04/14/11

Differentiation of the acute myeloid leukemia (AML) cell line HL-60 can be induced by all trans-retinoic acid (ATRA); however, the mechanism regulating this process has not been fully characterized. »
04/25/11

Bladder cancer is one of the most common malignancies and causes hundreds of thousands of deaths worldwide each year. Bladder cancer is strongly associated with exposure to environmental carcinogens. It is believed that DNA damage generated by environmental carcinogens and their metabolites causes development of bladder cancer. Nucleotide excision repair (NER) is the major DNA repair pathway for repairing bulk DNA damage generated by most environmental carcinogens, and XPC is a DNA damage recognition protein required for initiation of the NER process. Recent studies demonstrate reduced levels of XPC protein in tumors for a majority of bladder cancer patients. In this work we investigated the role of histone deacetylases (HDACs) in XPC gene silencing and bladder cancer development. The results of our HDAC inhibition study revealed that the treatment of HTB4 and HTB9 bladder cancer cells with the HDAC inhibitor valproic acid (VPA) caused an increase in transcription of the XPC gene in these cells. The results of our chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) studies indicated that the VPA treatment caused increased binding of both CREB1 and Sp1 transcription factors at the promoter region of the XPC gene for both HTB4 and HTB9 cells. The results of our immunohistochemistry (IHC) staining studies further revealed a strong correlation between the over-expression of HDAC4 and increased bladder cancer occurrence (p < 0.001) as well as a marginal significance of increasing incidence of HDAC4 positivity seen with an increase in severity of bladder cancer (p = 0.08). In addition, the results of our caspase 3 activation studies demonstrated that prior treatment with VPA increased the anticancer drug cisplatin-induced activation of caspase 3 in both HTB4 and HTB9 cells. All of these results suggest that the HDACs negatively regulate transcription of the XPC gene in bladder cancer cells and contribute to the severity of bladder tumors. »
04/20/11

To study the relationship between nitric oxide within cervical microenvironment and different HPV types as well as the effect of sodium nitroprusside (SNP), a nitric oxide donor, on the proliferation and apoptosis of cervical cancer cell lines. »
04/01/11

Casitas B-lineage lymphoma (Cbl) is an E3 ubiquitin ligase of many tyrosine kinase receptors. The authors previously detected c-Cbl mutation and low protein expression in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Therefore, it was hypothesized that overexpression of wild-type c-Cbl (c-Cbl WT) exhibits tumor growth inhibition. »
05/23/11

We investigated the importance of EPLIN, a cytoskeletal associated protein implicated in cancer, in clinical prostate cancer and its role in the PC-3 prostate cancer cell line (ATCC™). »
07/01/11

The incretin hormone glucagon-like peptide (GLP)-1 is secreted from intestinal L cells in response to food intake, and promotes insulin secretion and pancreatic β-cell proliferation. Reduced GLP-1 levels are observed in obesity and type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) and are associated with reduced insulin secretion and increased insulin resistance. »
06/03/11