Finnish researchers find a compound that prevents the growth of prostate cancer cells
2010-12-21
(Press-News.org) Evidence pointing to the effects of monensin emerged in a project investigating the effects of nearly 5,000 drugs and micromolecules on the growth of prostate cancer cells. The project involved most of the drugs on the market today. Researchers found that small amounts of compounds – disulfiram (Antabus), thiram, tricostatin A, and monensin – can prevent the growth of prostate cancer cells without significant effects on the growth of the normal human prostate epithelial cells.
Further studies revealed that monensin caused prostate cancer cell death by reducing the amount of testosterone receptor and by increasing production of reactive oxygen species and inducing DNA damage. In addition, monensin was shown to have combined effects with anti-androgens – the drugs suppressing the effects of androgens – in preventing prostate cancer cell growth.
"These research findings give rise to a potential new use for the monensin. The results also demonstrate that the effects of anti-androgens in suppressing the growth of cancer cells can be enhanced by using drugs inducing production of reactive oxygen species", say Senior Research Scientist Kristiina Iljin from VTT and Research Scientist Kirsi Ketola from the University of Turku.
The research findings concerning the effects of drugs and micromolecules were published in the Clinical Cancer Research journal in 2009. The effects of monensin on preventing the growth of prostate cancer was published in the Molecular Cancer Therapeutics journal in December 2010.
Recently, medical companies have shown great interest in these kinds of projects aiming at finding novel indications for established drugs. Since the dosage and adverse effects of drugs already in use and their combined effects with other drugs are relatively well known, this kind of drug repositioning may result in considerable cost savings.
Prostate cancer is the second most common cause of cancer death in men after lung cancer. It has been estimated that globally about 300,000 men die from prostate cancer every year.
INFORMATION:
END
ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:
2010-12-21
Awards have an impact on Spanish movie productivity, since they increase internal and external distribution demand, but subsidies have no effect whatsoever on the productivity of the Spanish film industry. This is the conclusion of researchers at the University of Granada (UGR), who have studied the production of films in Spain.
"Awards increase the amount of films produced by increasing productivity. In other words film industry workers and companies are more productive and efficient. However, we did not detect that subsidies had any such effect on productivity", Henry ...
2010-12-21
Horses are prone to develop genital cancer, especially as they grow older. Male horses are more commonly affected than mares but both sexes suffer from the condition, which is extremely difficult to treat and may result in the animals' death. Because of the similarity of the disease to human genital cancer it seemed possible that a similar agent might be responsible. Several human genital cancers, including cervical tumours, are known to be caused by a papillomavirus infection, so Brandt and her coworkers used genetic techniques to look for papillomavirus DNA in tissue ...
2010-12-21
The reproductive success of men and women is influenced by the food they receive at an early stage in life, according to new research by the University of Sheffield.
The research, which was published online this month (17 December 2010) in the journal Ecology, is the first study of its kind to show that early life food can have a serious influence on the life-long fertility of individuals.
The research team, led by Dr Ian Rickard from the Department of Animal and Plant Sciences at the University, used a combination of church record data on births in 18th century Finland ...
2010-12-21
Plastics-based materials have been in use for decades. But manufacturers are facing a serious hurdle in their quest for new developments: Substantial influences of the microscopic material structure on mechanical material properties cannot be observed directly. The synthetic polymer molecules are simply too small for microscopic observation in mechanical experiments. A team of physicists led by professor Andreas Bausch of the Technische Universitaet Muenchen (TUM) has now developed a method that allows just these kinds of measurements. They present their results in Nature ...
2010-12-21
Milan, Italy, 20 December 2010 – The capacity to remember that a zebra has stripes, or that a giraffe is a four-legged mammal, is known as semantic memory. It allows us to assign meaning to words and to recall general knowledge and concepts that we have learned. The deterioration of these capacities is a defining feature of semantic dementia and can also occur in Alzheimer's disease. A group of French neurologists and neuropsychologists have now identified the elements of semantic memory which are the first to deteriorate and may have thus explained why a surprising phenomenon ...
2010-12-21
A study among almost 50,000 people worldwide has identified DNA sequence variations linked with the heart's electrical rhythm in several surprising regions among 22 locations across the human genome. The variants were found by an international consortium, including Johns Hopkins researchers, and reported Nov. 14 in the Nature Genetics advance online publication.
Among the notable discoveries were variations in two side-by-side genes that regulate electrically charged particles to produce signals that start contraction of the heart and register as pulsing waves seen on ...
2010-12-21
A survey conducted by Johns Hopkins faculty found strong support among their peers for working more closely with the minority, inner-city community that surrounds the institution. Overall, 91 percent of faculty responders said closer ties make research more relevant to those it ultimately serves, and 87 percent said it improves the quality of research.
"This is a huge, stunning finding," says Nancy Kass, Sc.D., deputy director for public health at the Johns Hopkins Berman Institute of Bioethics. "Faculty are giving a ringing endorsement of how important working with ...
2010-12-21
New software developed by the U.S. Department of Energy's Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) and Northrop Grumman Shipbuilding (NGSB) may lead to a less expensive and less time consuming method to detect corrosion or other defects in a ship's pipes.
The copyrighted software, which is used to analyze digitized x-ray images to determine loss of wall thickness in pipes, was developed as the result of a six-month cooperative research and development agreement between SRNL and NGSB. SRNL has granted NGSB a license to commercialize and continue maturing the software ...
2010-12-21
Maritime transport causes about 4% of global man-made CO2 emissions which makes its carbon footprint approximately as high as Germany's. There is no regulation of international maritime transport emissions yet, but this is currently under discussion in the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). In respect of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, shipping is the most environmentally-friendly mode of transport. However, if no action is taken, it is estimated that emissions from ships will increase by ...
2010-12-21
One issue confronting the efficiency of wind as a promising renewable energy source is the wind itself—specifically, its changeability. While the aerodynamic performance of a wind turbine is best under steady wind flow, the efficiency of the blades degrades when exposed to conditions such as wind gusts, turbulent flow, upstream turbine wakes and wind shear.
Now, a new type of air-flow technology may soon increase the efficiency of large wind turbines under many different wind conditions.
Researchers from Syracuse University's L.C. Smith College of Engineering and ...
LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:
[Press-News.org] Finnish researchers find a compound that prevents the growth of prostate cancer cells
