Current Molecular Medicine - Volume 9, Issue 4, 2009

Hypoxia is a common feature of solid tumors, with significant effects on the responses to both chemotherapy and radiotherapy. It has now been well established that hypoxia is associated with a poor prognosis in multiple tumor types, and several mechanisms underlying this association have emerged over the last decade. Hypoxia appears to induce a diverse range of molecular changes in the tumor microenvironment that ar Read More

Hypoxia is a common characteristic of many solid tumors and is associated with poor prognosis. Cells with low oxygen levels can have altered sensitivity to radiotherapy and chemotherapy secondary to changes in the incidence of DNA single- and double-strand breaks (DNA-ssb, DNA-dsb), DNA base damage, DNA-DNA cross-links and DNA-protein cross-links. Recent evidence also supports that cells exposed to chronic hypoxi Read More

Hypoxia/anoxia promotes tumor aggressiveness and negatively impacts tumor response to therapy. Coordinate regulation of HIF-dependent and HIF-independent pathways has been shown to contribute to cellular adaptation to hypoxic stress, and to couple macromolecular synthesis rates to reduced energy availability. An important component of this type of adaptation is the activation of the endoplasmic reticulum kinase PER Read More

The poorly developed vasculature in solid human tumors is responsible for a profound level of intraand inter-tumor heterogeneity in oxygen concentration. High levels of hypoxia are associated with poor patient prognosis due in part to hypoxia-induced changes in cell metabolism, angiogenesis, invasiveness and resistance to therapy. Over the past decade several distinct oxygen sensing pathways that regulate the c Read More

Hypoxia or oxygen deficiency is a salient feature of solid tumors. Hypoxic tumors are often resistant to conventional cancer therapies, and tumor hypoxia correlates with advanced stages of malignancy. Hypoxic tumors appear to be poorly differentiated. Increasing evidence suggests that hypoxia has the potential to inhibit tumor cell differentiation and thus plays a direct role in the maintenance of cancer stem cells. Studie Read More

Hypoxia is a common feature of solid tumors, and abnormal tumor oxygen transport is a key factor in the imbalance between tumor oxygen supply and demand. Novel advanced imaging techniques can enable new insights into the complexities of tumor oxygen transport and hypoxia that were not previously known or fully appreciated. In this paper, we document new insights into tumor oxygen transport enabled by spectral ima Read More

Tumor hypoxia influences the outcome of treatment with radiotherapy, chemotherapy and even surgery, not only for the treatment of large bulky tumors with extensive necrosis, but also in the treatment of very small primary tumors and recurrences, micrometastases, and surgical margins with microscopic tumor involvement. Because hypoxic tumor cells are resistant to radiation and to many anticancer drugs, many appro Read More

Metastatic melanoma is a poor prognosis skin cancer. Since conventional treatments including surgery and chemotherapy often fail, novel therapeutic strategies are needed. In particular, identification of melanoma associated antigen has fostered the progress of both active (vaccines) and adoptive immunotherapy. Some promising results have been obtained, but most melanoma patients are not yet cured possibly bec Read More

Fanconi anemia (FA) is an autosomal recessive disorder characterized by multiple congenital anomalies, progressive bone marrow failure, and high cancer risk. Cells from FA patients exhibit spontaneous chromosomal instability and hypersensitivity to DNA interstrand cross-linking (ICL) agents. Although the precise mechanistic details of the FA/BRCA pathway of ICL-repair are not well understood, progress has been made in the i Read More

Allergic diseases emerge as a substantial health problem of the 21st century. Current therapies including combination therapies of corticosteroids and β2-agonists are highly effective, inexpensive and relatively safe. However, these medicaments only relieve symptoms but are not curing disease. So the challenge has to be to develop new therapeutics which are as effective as present medicaments without any side effects Read More

Since the discovery of Tumor Necrosis Factor-Related Apoptosis Inducing Ligand (TRAIL) in 1995, much has been learned about the protein, its receptors and signaling cascade to induce apoptosis and the regulation of its expression. However, the physiologic role or roles that TRAIL may play in vivo are still being explored. The expression of TRAIL on effector T cells and the ability of TRAIL to induce apoptosis in virally infected c Read More

Schizophrenia is a multifactorial disease characterized by a high heritability. Several candidate genes have been suggested, with the strongest evidences for genes encoding dystrobrevin binding protein 1 (DTNBP1), neuregulin 1 (NRG1), neuregulin 1 receptor (ERBB4) and disrupted in schizophrenia 1 (DISC1), as well as several neurotrophic factors. These genes are involved in neuronal plasticity and play also a role in a Read More