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Popular Articles

Is Organic Food Really No Better Than Other Foods?
The Food Standards Agency (FSA), UK, issued a report last week claiming that there is no evidence of any significant benefits to human health from consuming organic foods. It is surprising that such a claim could be made from a public health agency after what could best be described as rather limited research - according to much of the British press.

Mutations Extending Lifespan Induce Expression Of Germline Genes In Somatic Cells
In the sense that organisms existing today are connected through a chain of life - through their parents, grandparents and other ancestors - almost a billion years back to the first animals of the pre-Cambrian era, an animal"s reproductive cells can be considered to be immortal. These germline cells generate their offspring"s somatic cells - other cells involved in all aspects of growth, metabolism and behavior, which have a set lifespan - and new germline cells that continue on, generation after generation.
News of the day
$33.9 Billion Spent Out-Of-Pocket On Complementary And Alternative Medicine By Americans
Americans spent $33.9 billion out-of-pocket on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) over the previous 12 months, according to a 2007 government survey1. CAM is a group of diverse medical and health care systems, practices, and products such as herbal supplements, meditation, chiropractic, and acupuncture that are not generally considered to be part of conventional medicine. CAM accounts for approximately 1.5 percent of total health care expenditures ($2.2 trillion2) and 11.2 percent of total out-of-pocket expenditures (conventional out-of-pocket: $286.6 billion2 and CAM out-of-pocket: $33.9 billion1) on health care in the United States.
Oncology

Four New Targets For Breast Cancer Identified By Researchers

Four suspects often found at the scene of the crime in cancer are guilty of the initiation and progression of breast cancer in mice that are resistant to the disease, a team led by scientists at The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center reports in the June edition of Cancer Cell. "We have a smoking gun" that shows it"s no coincidence the three protein receptors and the enzyme that makes them are abnormally expressed in many types of cancer, said Gordon Mills, M.D., Ph.D., professor and chair of M. D. Anderson"s Department of Systems Biology and senior author of the paper. "We"ve compiled lots of evidence that they are associated with cancer, what"s been missing is proof that they could cause cancer," Mills said. "There are no questions left, they should be targeted." The four are three lysophosphatidic acid (LPA) receptors (LPA1, LPA2, and LPA3) and the LPA-producing enzyme, autotaxin. "Lysophosphatidic acid", Mills said, "is the single most potent known cellular survival factor." LPA binds to a series of G protein-coupled receptors to spark normal cell proliferation, viability, production of growth factors and survival. The Cancer Cell paper shows this powerful network is hijacked to initiate breast cancer and fuel tumor growth, invasion and metastasis. The team took a strain of mice that is highly resistant to breast cancer and then created four transgenic strains, each strain expressing one of the receptors or autotaxin. At 24 months, none of the 44 original cancer-resistant mice developed mammary gland cancer. Only one case of inflammation and two cases of a potentially precancerous accumulation of cells known as hyperplasia were noted. Cancer incidence ranged from 32 percent to 52.8 percent in the four strains of mice with one of the culprit receptors or autotaxin. Invasive and/or metastatic tumors were present to varying degrees, with 45.5 percent of the tumors in the LPA3 strain metastasizing. A number of drugs are in preclinical development that target the receptors and autotaxin, Mills said. "Now we have transgenic mouse models to test drugs to go forward against these targets." The four transgenic strains of mice have three unusual characteristics that the team believes make them particularly well-suited as a model of human breast cancer. Unlike most other mouse models, these produce breast cancer that is invasive and metastatic, and some tumors that are estrogen-receptor positive. ER-positive disease is the most common type of breast cancer. The research was funded by grants from the National Cancer Institute, the U.S. Department of Defense Breast Cancer Research Program, the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, the M. D. Anderson NCI core grant, and sponsored research by LPATH Biotechnologies. Co-authors are first author Shuying Liu, M.D., Ph.D., Makiko Umezu-Goto, Ph.D., Mandi Murph, Ph.D., Yiling Lu, M.D., Fan Zhang, M.S. and Shuangxing Yu, M.D., all of M. D. Anderson"s Department of Systems Biology; Wenbin Liu, Ph.D. and Kevin Coombes, Ph.D., of the Department of Bioinformatics and Computational Biology; L. Clifton Stephens, Ph.D., D.V.M, of the Department of Veterinary Medicine and Surgery; and Mien-Chie Hung, Ph.D., Department of Molecular and Cellular Oncology; Adrian Lee, Ph.D., and Xiaojiang Cui, Ph.D., of the Lester and Sue Smith Breast Center at the Baylor College of Medicine, Cui is now with John Wayne Cancer Institute of Saint John"s Health Center in Santa Monica, CA ; George Murrow and Charles Perou, Ph.D., of the Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of North Carolina; William Muller, Ph.D., of McGill Cancer Centre in Montreal; and Xianjun Fang, Ph.D., of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Virginia Commonwealth University. Scott Merville University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center


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