Current Signal Transduction Therapy - Volume 7, Issue 3, 2012

Signal transducer and activator of transcription (STAT) proteins are second messengers in the JAK/STAT signaling pathway. The activation mechanism of STAT proteins involves phosphorylation on a single tyrosine residue by Janus-activated family kinases (JAK) in response to the binding of a series of extracellular proteins, such as cytokines, growth factors, hormones and membrane receptors. Activated via phosphorylati Read More

The effects of hydrogen peroxide, an oxidative agent, on the growth of A431 (an epidermoid carcinoma) cell line were investigated. It was also explored that whether or not the cell localization (peripheral or central position in a cell population) would modify the cell death-inducing effect of hydrogen peroxide. Anti-growth effect of hydrogen peroxide (0.05-1mM) on cell survival was tested by the MTT viability assay while the Read More

Bladder cancer is the second most common malignancy of urinary tract. Normal bladder urothelium is a transitional epithelium which consist of 3-7 layers and three different types of cells. The question is what kind of cells is responsible for bladder cancer development, probably stem cells? Stem cells can be sensitive to changes in their environment including toxic substances related to smoking. These changes within stem cells m Read More

Introduction and Hypothesis: Regeneration of external urinary sphincter can improve stress urinary incontinence following surgical treatment of prostate cancer. One of the most promising approaches is to force transformation of injected undifferentiated stem cells into muscle phenotype by surrounding tissues, which release paracrine factors. The aim of the study was to determine whether different conditioned media and c Read More

Cancer cells differ from the other cells by their ability to survive under conditions of enhanced oxidative stress. This property of cancer cells might also be an origin of resistance of tumors to drug treatment. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) overproduction (oxidative stress) might be responsible for both survival and death of cancer cells and the opposite effects of ROS signaling can depend on many reasons. In present work we c Read More

Y-box binding protein 1 (YB-1) is a member of the large protein family with an evolutionarily ancient coldshock domain. It is involved in the regulation of some global traits of malignancy and functions both in the cell nucleus and cytoplasm. We investigated the content of YB-1 mRNA and proportion of cells with YB-1 nuclear localization in breast cancer (BC) tumors taken at mastectomy. We showed that an increased level Read More

Breast cancer is the second-leading cause of cancer death among women in the United States, alone. Many papers throughout the past and current medical literature have shown it is strongly associated with the reproductive axis and the growth hormone axis. Ghrelin is a pleiotropic 28-aminoacidic hormone and an integrated component of the GH axis, which is implicated in breast cancer risk factors. There has never be Read More

Many patients suffering from head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) do not benefit from cetuximab added to radiotherapy. Some of the mechansisms leading to resistance to the combined treatment are already understood. However, they do not fully explain the resistance to multimodal therapy. In this review, potential mechanisms of resistance to therapy will be addressed, starting from the outside of the cell Read More

Even though cancer therapies attain nowadays as many as 10 million survivors, some studies surprisingly report a higher risk of cardiovascular death compared with that of tumor recurrence. Cancer survivors are thus candidates for a thorough cardiovascular evaluation, because they acquire cardiovascular risk together with oncologic cure. VEGF or tyrosinkinase inhibitors, increasingly used in a large variety of tumours Read More

Inositol hexaphosphate (IP6, InsP6) is a polyphosphorylated carbohydrate with diverse signaling properties. IP6 is plentiful in organisms as diverse as yeast, actinobacteria, mammals and plants. In the plant kingdom, IP6 accumulates during seed development; during germination it is broken down into lower inositol phosphates and micronutrients to maintain seedling. IP6 is the most abundant of the intracellular inositol phosp Read More

There is a critical need for the development of novel diagnostic and therapeutic strategies for pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), a devastating disease known for its poor prognosis due to its late presentation and high aggressiveness. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of short non-coding RNAs that have been implicated in the gene regulation in normal cellular processes as well as cancer pathogenesis. Patterns Read More