The study, published online today in The Journal of Cell Biology, maps how inflammation pushes acinar cells in the pancreas — those that produce digestive enzymes — to transform into duct-like cells. As these cells change, they can acquire mutations that can result in further progression to pancreatic cancer, says senior author Peter Storz, Ph.D., a biochemist and molecular biologist at Mayo Clinic. …
The researchers’ study, published in today’s issue of the journal Nature, found that an enzyme, activation-induced cytidine deaminase (AID), helps in the process that changes an adult human cell into an induced pluripotent stem cell (iPS cell). …
Some people develop invasive bladder cancer, which is where the cancer has grown through the muscle layer of the bladder. When this occurs, there is a higher risk that the cancer will spread to other areas of the body and it is much more difficult to treat…
Seventy percent of breast cancer patients have estrogen receptor positive cancer, and most patients respond well to anti-estrogen therapies, for a few years at least. Within 15 years, however, 50% will relapse and eventually die from the disease. Dr Andrew Stone, Professor Susan Clark and Professor Liz Musgrove, from Sydney’s Garvan Institute of Medical Research, in collaboration with scientists from Cardiff University, have demonstrated that the BCL-2 gene becomes epigenetically ‘silenced’ in resistant tumours. This process is potentially detectable in the blood, providing a diagnostic marker. …
"Scientists have known that Bmi1 is a central control switch within the adult stem cells of many tissues, including the brain, blood, lung and mammary gland," said Ophir Klein, MD, PhD, who directs the Craniofacial and Mesenchymal Biology (CMB) Program and serves as chair of the Division of Craniofacial Anomalies at UCSF. "Bmi1 also is a cancer-causing gene that becomes reactivated in cancer cells." Klein’s research group now has shown that BMI1 plays another role in ensuring that the process of development unfolds normally. The hallmarks of all stem cells are that they are immature, they keep dividing to replenish their numbers almost indefinitely, and they generate new specialized cells to function in the tissues in which they reside, a process called cell differentiation. …
Now, in this week’s issue of Cell Stem Cell, the Salk Institute’s Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte and his colleagues show that the recipe for iPSCs is far more versatile than originally thought. For the first time, they have replaced a gene once thought impossible to substitute, creating the potential for more flexible recipes that should speed the adoption of stem cells therapies…
The study is the result of a collaboration of scientists at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden, University of Michigan, and University of California San Diego, USA, who were interested in finding out whether autophagy can be affected by events in the cell nucleus. Surprisingly, they discovered that a signal chain in the nucleus serves as a kind of molecular switch that determines whether the cell dies or survives. …
Chris Proud, Professor of Cellular Regulation in Biological Sciences at the University of Southampton says: "Cancer cells grow and divide much more rapidly than normal cells, meaning they have a much higher demand for and are often starved of, nutrients and oxygen. We have discovered that a cellular component, eEF2K, plays a critical role in allowing cancer cells to survive nutrient starvation, whilst normal, healthy cells do not usually require eEF2K in order to survive. Therefore, by blocking the function of eEF2K, we should be able to kill cancer cells, without harming normal, healthy cells in the process." Almost all cells in the human body contain the same basic components, meaning that to attack one of them in a cancer cell, that component will also be affected in normal cells…
In a paper appearing online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the UTMB scientists describe cell-culture and mouse experiments demonstrating that colon cancer cells produce large amounts of hydrogen sulfide, and depend on the compound for survival and growth. "They love it and they need it," said UTMB professor Csaba Szabo, an author on the paper. "Colon cancer cells thrive on this stuff — our data show that they use it to make energy, to divide, to grow and to invade the host." The researchers connected the bulk of colon-cancer hydrogen sulfide production to a protein called CBS, which is produced at much higher levels in colon cancer cells than in non-cancerous tissue…
Glioblastomas are the most common form of brain tumor in adults — and the most aggressive. Because of the way the tumors invasively infiltrate the brain, spreading like ivy, they cannot be removed fully by surgery. There is no cure, and few patients survive more than two to three years even with aggressive treatment. …