(Press-News.org) New Orleans, LA – Research led by Dr. Suresh Alahari, the Fred Brazda Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans and its Stanley S. Scott Cancer Center, details exactly how the Her2 cancer gene promotes the progression and spread of breast cancer cells. The inactivation of a tumor suppression gene called Nischarin is among the mechanisms identified. The findings provide a new therapeutic target to block the function of Her2. The research was published in Cancer Research, OnlineFirst on January 21, 2013.
About 30% of breast cancers are positive for the Her2 oncogene. Although this gene is implicated in breast cancer, the exact mechanism has been unknown. In this study, the researchers showed that the Her2 oncogene activates two short microRNAs, called miR-27b and miR-23b, which in turn regulate breast cancer progression and lung metastasis. The study also shows, for the first time, that these microRNAs inactivate the function of a tumor suppressor gene called Nischarin, that Dr. Alahari's lab discovered.
Analysis to determine which of a number of cancer-related genes could be potential targets for miR-23b/27b found that only one other gene and Nischarin were directly targeted, and these microRNAs repressed its function. Nischarin is a novel protein that regulates breast cancer cell migration and movement. In a previous study, Dr. Alahari found that breast tumor growth and metastasis were reduced in the samples where they manipulated the overproduction of Nischarin.
"Our data for the first time show that these two microRNAs are highly expressed in breast cancer patients, and we were able suppress the expression of microRNAs using a novel antisense compound that led to inhibition of breast tumor growth in a mouse model," notes Dr. Alahari. "This study will be helpful in developing novel breast cancer therapeutic drugs that target mciroRNAs in breast cancer patients."
Excluding skin cancer, breast cancer is the most common type of cancer among women in the United States. The American Cancer Society estimates
232,340 new cases of invasive breast cancer among American women this year, and 2,240 among men in the US, with 39,620 deaths in women and 410 deaths in men.
Risk factors include aging, weight gain, combined hormone therapy, physical inactivity, and alcohol consumption. A family history increases risk, as does never having had children or having a first child after age 30.
Mammography can often detect breast cancer at an early stage when treatment options are greatest and a cure is possible.
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Researchers from the Cleveland Clinic, Regulus Therapeutics, and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center also contributed.
The research was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health, the Susan Komen Foundation, the Louisiana Board of Regents, and the Louisiana Cancer Research Consortium among others.
LSU Health Sciences Center New Orleans educates Louisiana's health care professionals. The state's academic health leader, LSUHSC consists of a School of Medicine, the state's only School of Dentistry, Louisiana's only public School of Public Health, the only School of Nursing within an academic health center in Louisiana, and Schools of Allied Health Professions, and Graduate Studies. LSUHSC faculty take care of patients in public and private hospitals and clinics throughout the region. In the vanguard of biosciences research in a number of areas in a worldwide arena, the LSUHSC research enterprise generates jobs and enormous economic impact. LSUHSC faculty have made lifesaving discoveries and continue to work to prevent, advance treatment, or cure disease. To learn more, visit http://www.lsuhsc.edu and http://www.twitter.com/LSUHSCHealth.
(Garrison, NY) Arguing that obesity "may be the most difficult and elusive public health problem the United States has ever encountered" and that anti-obesity efforts having made little discernible difference, Daniel Callahan, co-founder and President Emeritus of The Hastings Center, proposes a bold and controversial approach to fighting the epidemic.
Callahan says that the public health community can learn from one of the most successful public health campaigns: the anti-smoking campaign. A primary strategy has been to stigmatize smokers, he says, making it clear that ...
The kindness of mankind most likely developed from our more sinister and self-serving tendencies, according to Princeton University and University of Arizona research that suggests society's rules against selfishness are rooted in the very exploitation they condemn.
The report in the journal Evolution proposes that altruism — society's protection of resources and the collective good by punishing "cheaters" — did not develop as a reaction to avarice. Instead, communal disavowal of greed originated when competing selfish individuals sought to control and cancel out one ...
NEW YORK - January 22, 2013 - In 2009, the Securities and Exchange Commission mandated that public companies submit portions of annual (10-K) and quarterly (10-Q) reports—in a digitized format known as eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL). The goal of this type of data was to provide more relevant, timely, and reliable "interactive" data to investors and analysts. The XBRL-formatted data is meant to allow users to manipulate and organize the financial information according to their own purposes faster, cheaper, and more easily than current alternatives.
But how ...
Using a brain-imaging technique that examines the entire infant brain, researchers have found that the anatomy of certain brain areas – the hippocampus and cerebellum – can predict children's language abilities at 1 year of age.
The University of Washington study is the first to associate these brain structures with future language skills. The results are published in the January issue of the journal Brain and Language.
"The brain of the baby holds an infinite number of secrets just waiting to be uncovered, and these discoveries will show us why infants learn languages ...
1. Evidence Review: Some Behavioral Interventions May Reduce Child Abuse and Neglect
Risk assessment and behavioral interventions in pediatric clinics may reduce child abuse and neglect, according to a recent evidence review. Researchers reviewed studies published since 2004 when the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force last published recommendations on child abuse and neglect to determine the effectiveness of primary care relevant interventions on child abuse and neglect outcomes. The researchers also sought to determine adverse effects of interventions. Physicians and ...
A team of researchers based at Johns Hopkins has decoded a system that makes certain types of immune cells impervious to HIV infection. The system's two vital components are high levels of a molecule that becomes embedded in viral DNA like a code written in invisible ink, and an enzyme that, when it reads the code, switches from repairing the DNA to chopping it up into unusable pieces. The researchers, who report the find in the Jan. 21 early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, say the discovery points toward a new approach to eradicating HIV ...
CHICAGO --- How do you annihilate lymphoma without using any drugs?
Starve it to death by depriving it of what appears to be a favorite food: HDL cholesterol.
Northwestern Medicine® researchers discovered this with a new nanoparticle that acts like a secret double agent. It appears to the cancerous lymphoma cell like a preferred meal -- natural HDL. But when the particle engages the cell, it actually plugs it up and blocks cholesterol from entering. Deprived of an essential nutrient, the cell eventually dies.
A new study by C. Shad Thaxton, M.D., and Leo I. Gordon, ...
Older adults with hearing loss are more likely to develop problems thinking and remembering than older adults whose hearing is normal, according to a new study by hearing experts at Johns Hopkins.
In the study, volunteers with hearing loss, undergoing repeated cognition tests over six years, had cognitive abilities that declined some 30 percent to 40 percent faster than in those whose hearing was normal. Levels of declining brain function were directly related to the amount of hearing loss, the researchers say. On average, older adults with hearing loss developed a significant ...
CHICAGO – Hearing loss appears to be associated with accelerated cognitive decline and cognitive impairment in a study of older adults, according to a report published Online First by JAMA Internal Medicine, a JAMA Network publication.
The prevalence of dementia is projected to double every 20 years because of the world's aging population so identifying the factors and understanding the pathways that lead to cognitive decline and dementia in older adults is a public health priority, the authors write in the study background.
Frank R. Lin, M.D., Ph.D., of The Johns Hopkins ...
CHICAGO – Regular aspirin use appears to be associated with an increased risk of neovascular age-related macular degeneration (AMD), which is a leading cause of blindness in older people, and it appears to be independent of a history of cardiovascular disease and smoking, according to a report published Online First by JAMA Internal Medicine, a JAMA Network publication.
Aspirin is one of the most widely used medications in the world and is commonly used in the prevention of cardiovascular disease, such as myocardial infarction (heart attack) and ischemic stroke. While ...
