Posts Tagged ‘Cancer’

The loss of cell polarity and cancer are two processes are related, although there is no direct evidence to explain this correlation. In stem cells, loss of cell polarity and consequently, the alteration of the division process could produce cells unable to respond to the mechanisms controlling the proliferation and lead to cancer cells. Research by Emmanuel Caussinus and Cayetano Gonzalez has raised two related questions: if the stem cells can become cancerous cells and if this process may be related to loss of polarity.

To answer these questions have been developed in Drosophila melanogaster larval neuroblasts with mutations in genes that control asymmetric cell division (raps, look, numb or pros) and have observed their proliferative capacity after transplanting in the abdomen of adult flies. Read the rest of this entry »

The infectivity of a virus is determined by its ability to
avoid the whole machinery of the host cell defense presented. Vaccinia virus
(orthopoxvirus family of which belongs to the virus which causes smallpox)
exhibits a surprising: it is able to induce motility of cells infected, as
evidenced by work done in the Motility Laboratory Cellular Cancer Research in
London. The first author of an article published in Science, Ferran Valderrama,
is a Spanish left the ranks of the Institute of Biomedical Research August Pi I
Sunyer, University of Barcelona and is currently studying in the English
capital, the cellular mechanisms involved in cancer . Read the rest of this entry »

The genetic model of cancer has led research in this field for decades, until Feinberg and Vogelstein (Johns Hopkins) described in 1983 an extensive loss of DNA methylation in tumor cells. With the results came the first evidence that epigenetic changes, heritable but outside the sequence, could make the cancer. The manifest skepticism that greeted the idea was in part due to the slow pace of progress in this field over the next fifteen years. Read the rest of this entry »

There are items that make a difference, appearing one at the right time, involving a breakthrough or provide any major surprises. It must then stop to reflect, to contextualize and deepen. With this in mind we opened section. As we have been doing regularly, we discuss the reference and appreciate your interest, but delve into the subject by giving it a context and a time that, in this case, it is particularly recent. Read the rest of this entry »

Cancer, such as biological process that goes beyond the laws of development and cellular growth, requires relocation process and investigate molecular mechanisms that lead to uncontrolled cell division, genomic instability and tumor development. The identification of these new patterns of growth and development can be very important to understand and combat processes tumorogénesis.1 It appears from research such as referenced here, the Cdc6 and other cellular components are joined, forming complexes prerreplicativos before initiated DNA duplication. Read the rest of this entry »

A rare disease characterized by premature aging is modeled after a group of Spanish scientists to better understand the relationship between cancer, genes and aging. This is Werner syndrome, an inherited disorder characterized by premature aging of the individual, genomic instability and an increased incidence of tumors. The study was conducted jointly by researchers at the Hospital Clinic of Barcelona, Biomedical Research Center of Navarre, the National Institute on Aging U.S., and the group of Manel Esteller of the CNIO. Read the rest of this entry »

Epigenetic modifications of chromatin and telomeres have an important effect in regulating how and when our genes are expressed. Previous studies have shown that telomere shortening occurs in pathological situations such as cancer and the aging process. However, until now little was known about the overall impact of these defects and what their mechanisms of action. Read the rest of this entry »

Researchers Differentiation and Cancer Programme of the Centre for Genomic Regulation in Barcelona (CRG) have shown, in an article that took the cover of a recent issue of Cancer Cell, the connections between DNA methylation mechanisms and the complex Polycomb protein, both involvedyear in Nature that the two mechanisms mentioned above could be interconnected with each other biochemically regulate genes together. Now what we have done is to check in tumor cells of patients with acute promyelocytic leukemia. The work has shown that two mechanisms are not only interconnected, but one reinforces the other and, moreover, one needs the other. This is an important contribution for future drug therapy, since it assumes that if you can correct the activity of one of the two mechanisms regulated erroneously reverse the actions of another. Read the rest of this entry »