Serendipity points to new potential target and therapy for melanoma

MicroRNA-26a suppresses melanoma and is lost in many cancers

2012-12-20

(Press-News.org) A University of Colorado Cancer Center study in this month's edition of the Journal of Investigative Dermatology describes a new target and potential treatment for melanoma, the most dangerous form of skin cancer. MicroRNA can decide which genes in a cell's DNA are expressed and which stay silent. Melanoma tends to lack microRNA-26a, which makes the gene SODD go silent.

"It's a double negative," says Yiqun Shellman, PhD, investigator at the CU Cancer Center, associate professor at the CU School of Medicine, and the study's co-senior author. "miR-26a works to stop the growth of cancer. You turn off this thing that should stop growth, and you have growth."

When Shellman, David Norris and colleagues reintroduced microRNA-26a to melanoma cell lines that lacked it, they saw a marked decrease in cancer cell survival. MicroRNA-26a killed melanoma cells while leaving healthy cells unharmed.

In fact, the discovery started back a couple steps. First the group compared microRNA expression in healthy cells to that of microRNA expression in melanoma cells. "We hoped the difference between microRNA expression in healthy and melanoma cells would show which ones were contributing to tumorgenesis," Shellman says.

The microRNA most consistently different between healthy and cancerous cells was 26a. The discovery of how it works and what exactly it does was serendipitous. "We started by testing the effect of microRNA-26a on known gene targets to see if it was effecting the expression of logical, cancer-causing pathways, but none of them seemed affected in melanoma," Shellman says. "We were working with the SODD gene in an unrelated project, and SODD has a putative but not high-scored binding site for miR-26a, and thought, why not test it? Sure enough, it turned out to be the target – microRNA-26a downregulates this gene."

Shellman hopes this robust finding in cell cultures will help pave the way for future work with microRNA-26a as a therapeutic target in animal models and eventually a human trial.

"The first step is to further pinpoint the genetic signatures of the patients likely to benefit from microRNA-26a replacement therapy," Shellman says, noting that only some and not all melanoma cells were killed by miRNA replacement. "Maybe it's simply the downregulation of microRNA-26a itself, or maybe we can use SODD expression as the biomarker," Shellman says.

Once Shellman and colleagues discover the characteristics of a melanoma susceptible to microRNA-26a treatment, they hope funding will allow the lab to follow the promising therapy up the evolution from cells to humans. ### END

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Cultural, social factors identified as barriers to minority participation in stem cell donation

2012-12-20

New research examining the role of race and ethnicity in an individual's decision to become a donor for hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) identifies several factors associated with varied participation rates in national donor registries across racial/ethnic groups. Results of this first-of-its-kind study are published online today in Blood, the Journal of the American Society of Hematology (ASH). Hematopoietic cell transplants serve as valuable treatments for a range of blood disorders, as they generate new, healthy blood cells to replace diseased cells. While ...

Poison for cancer cells

2012-12-20

This press release is available in German. In their quest for new agents, pharmaceutical researchers test millions of substances all over the world. They like using color-forming reactions to identify new molecules. However, in intensively colored solutions or in the case of mixtures with multiple substances these tests fail. As part of his doctoral thesis, Martin Stein, member of staff at the Chair of Biochemistry at the Technische Universitaet Muenchen, developed a testing reaction based on magnetic resonance data. It helps find a specific pharmaceutical molecule ...

Clean air: New paints break down nitrogen oxides

2012-12-20

The Seventies: Smog alert in the Ruhr area, acid rain, dying spruce trees in the Bavarian Forest. In those days, the solution was filter systems for the smokestacks in the Ruhr area. Today, people in the urban areas are suffering from high levels of pollution that is being caused by, among other things, automotive traffic. Particularly undesired: the nitrogen oxides (NOX). In the meantime, the European Union tightened the limit values even further; in many communities they are being exceeded. Michael Hüben of the Fraunhofer Institute for Molecular Biology and Applied Ecology ...

Aldrich Materials Science discovers liquid-free preparation of metal organic frameworks

2012-12-20

St. Louis, MO – December 18, 2012 – Researchers at Aldrich Materials Science, a strategic technology initiative of Sigma-Aldrich Corporation (NASDAQ:SIAL) have discovered an innovative way to design an important class of three-dimensional (3D) hybrid structures, Metal Organic Frameworks (MOFs), under completely liquid-free conditions. High purity MOF products prepared by the liquid-free process may be ideally suited as rare earth containing materials for sensors and detectors, electronic or magnetic materials. The discovery also extends liquid-free preparation techniques ...

Pair of proteins gets brain cells into shape

2012-12-20

This press release is available in German. The study conducted by Prof. Frank Bradke's team provides indications on brain development and about the causes of diseases of the nervous system. The results have now been published in "Neuron". Under the microscope, the brain appears as a network of intricate beauty comprising billions of nerve cells (the so-called "neurons") linked together. This network is engaged in a constant process of sharing information. The signals are transmitted from neuron to neuron through fine ramifications of the cell body. However, to acquire ...

University of Alberta research working towards treatment for aortic aneurysms in the abdomen

2012-12-20

A researcher with the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry and the Mazankowski Alberta Heart Institute is looking closely at a molecule linked to aortic aneurysms in the abdomen, and her findings could lead to a treatment to reduce swelling of the aortic artery, which would be a life-saving treatment. Zamaneh Kassiri, a professor in the Department of Physiology, and Ratnadeep Basu, a PhD trainee in Kassiri's lab, have been looking at the role of a protein called TIMP3 in the vessels. Their most recent findings, published in The Journal of Biological Chemistry, shows that animal ...

Death of hemlock trees yields new life for hardwood trees, but at what cost to the ecosystem?

2012-12-20

URBANA – Due to the introduction of exotic pests and pathogens, tree species are being eliminated one by one from forest ecosystems. In some cases, scientists can observe immediately how their loss affects the environment, whereas in other cases, creative puzzle solving and analysis reveal unexpected repercussions. In the case of the loss of the hemlock tree, University of Illinois landscape and ecosystem ecologist Jennifer Fraterrigo uncovered a surprising benefit to hardwood species. Throughout much of the eastern United States, a pest called the hemlock woolly adelgid ...

Discovery may pave way to genetically enhanced biofuel crops

2012-12-20

Best known for its ability to transform simmering pots of sugared fruit into marmalades and jams, pectin is a major constituent of plant cell walls and the middle lamella, the sticky layer that glues neighboring plant cells together. Pectin imparts strength and elasticity to the plant and forms a protective barrier against the environment. Several different kinds of pectic compounds combine to form pectin. The relative proportion of each of these depends on the plant species, location within the plant, and environment. Pectic compounds decorated with β-1,4-galactan ...

Chromosome 'anchors' organize DNA during cell division

2012-12-20

LA JOLLA, CA----For humans to grow and to replace and heal damaged tissues, the body's cells must continually reproduce, a process known as "cell division," by which one cell becomes two, two become four, and so on. A key question of biomedical research is how chromosomes, which are duplicated during cell division so that each daughter cell receives an exact copy of a person's genome, are arranged during this process. Now, scientists at the Salk Institute have discovered a new characteristic of human cell division that may help explain how our DNA is organized in the ...

From farm to table, mealworms may be the next best food

2012-12-20

Food enthusiasts interested in sustainable farm practices may soon have a new meat alternative: insects. Beetle larvae (called mealworms) farms produce more edible protein than traditional farms for chicken, pork, beef or milk, for the same amount of land used, according to research published December 19 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Dennis Oonincx and colleagues from the University of Wageningen, Netherlands. The researchers compared the environmental impact of meat production on a mealworm farm to traditional animal farms using three parameters: Land usage, ...

Liquid metal modified hexagonal boron nitride flakes for efficient electromagnetic wave absorption and thermal management

Failure mechanisms in PEM water electrolyzers

Study captures how cancer cells hide from brain immune cells, shows that removing their “don’t eat me” signals stops their escape

Persistent antibiotic resistance of cholera-causing bacteria in Africa revealed from a multinational workshop for strengthening disease surveillance

SwRI, Trinity University to synthesize novel compound to mitigate effects of stroke, heart attack

Novel endocrine therapy giredestrant improves disease-free survival over standard of care for patients with early-stage breast cancer in phase III lidERA trial

Serendipity points to new potential target and therapy for melanoma

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: