Current Pharmacogenomics and Personalized Medicine (Formerly Current Pharmacogenomics) - Volume 11, Issue 1, 2013

The generation of genetically altered mice for research is invaluable for investigations into the underlying mechanisms of common complex diseases such as cancer as well as for therapeutic studies. The correct identification of the genotype of each mouse is therefore essential. Genotyping is routinely performed by using blood, tail or ear tissue; however, this can cause pain or discomfort to the animal and nor is Read More

Multiple single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with prostate cancer (PC) have been reported in statistically robust studies in the past but these require an in-depth mechanistic understanding with respect to the biological pathways leading to disease. The current study was carried out to examine the PC and benign urology disease risk associations with lifestyle, demographic and genetic factors in a group of men be Read More

Acquired resistance to trastuzumab is a clinical problem in the treatment of HER2-over-expressing metastatic breast cancer. Importantly, an earlier report suggested that high body mass index was associated with reduced overall survival and reduced time to progression in patients with early stage or metastatic HER2-positive breast cancer treated with trastuzumab. Adipocyte-secreted factors may stimulate growth of HER2-p Read More

Interstitial fluid, obtained by gentle centrifugation of the renal biopsy specimen, is highly enriched in elements directly secreted by the kidney tissue and is suitable for proteomic analysis. Here we describe the first clinical application of renal interstitial fluid analysis in a subset of samples obtained from patients affected by idiopathic membranous nephropathy. We included in the study fifty-one patients with different pathologic diag Read More

Glycosylation, linking the glycan chains to protein or lipid, is the most common and complex post-translational modifications of proteins. One of the important functions of glycoprotein is to maintain the ordered social life of each cell in multicellular organisms. Glycosylation is sensitive to the biochemical environment leading to the alteration of glycan chains under the physiological condition and specific diseases such as cance Read More

Polymorphisms in genes involved in pain processing contribute to variation in pain sensitivity and clinical response to opioid therapy. This paper reviews the evidence on how opioid receptor, mu 1 (OPRM1) polymorphisms might influence pain sensitivity, opioid dose requirements and opioid-related effects such as analgesia and side effects. For example, it is shown that (1) individuals with AG and GG genotypes (118G variant Read More

The glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) family, which includes GDNF, artemin, persephin, and neurturin, rests within the transforming growth factor-beta superfamily. GDNF family members play a crucial role in the development of peripheral autonomic and sensory neurons. Recent studies on the impact of GDNF on posttraumatic nerve regeneration and the treatment of neuropathic pain found that GDNF reversed th Read More