Relevance of both individual risk factors and occupational exposure in cancer survival studies: the example of intestinal type sinonasal adenocarcinoma.

Objectives/hypothesis: Wood dust is a well-established risk factor for intestinal type sinonasal adenocarcinoma. The 5-year overall survival has varied from 20% to 80% according T1-T4 stages; 5-year survival according to histologic subtype has varied from 20% to 50%. To date, no study has evaluated whether environmental, occupational, and personal risk factors have any impact on both overall and cancer-specific survival.

Dietary prevention of malignant glioma aggressiveness, implications in oxidant stress and apoptosis.

Our study explored the influence of diet on gliomagenesis and associated systemic effects (SE) in rats. The experimental diet contained various ingredients supposed to interfere with carcinogenesis, mainly phytochemicals (PtcD for phytochemical diet) and its effects were compared to those of the same diet without the phytochemicals (BD for basal diet). Glioma was induced by ethylnitrosourea to pregnant females fed the diets from the start of gestation until the moment of sacrifice of the offpsrings.

[Translational research and Cancer Plan].

The French Cancer Plan 2003-2007 has made translational research central to its research programme, to ensure the care-research continuum and the quickest application possible for the most recent discoveries, for the patients' benefit. This is a new field of research, still little-known or ill-understood. A working group, composed of physicians and researchers from academic research and industrial research, sought to define translational research in cancerology and define the issues at stake in it.

Increase in PGE2 biosynthesis induces a Bax dependent apoptosis correlated to patients' survival in glioblastoma multiforme.

Prostaglandin E(2) plays multiple roles both in the physiology and the physiopathology of human brain, which are not completely understood. We have identified in a subset of human glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) tumors, the most common form of adult brain cancer, an increased expression of mPGES-1, the enzyme which catalyses the isomerization of PGH(2) into PGE(2) downstream of cyclooxygenase 2 (COX-2). The sensitivity of primary cultures of GBM to apoptosis was augmented by the overexpression of mPGES-1, whereas the knockdown of its expression by shRNA decreased the apoptotic threshold in vitro and stimulated tumor growth in vivo.

Changes in liver mitochondrial plasticity induced by brain tumor.

Background: Accumulating data suggest that liver is a major target organ of systemic effects observed in the presence of a cancer. In this study, we investigated the consequences of the presence of chemically induced brain tumors in rats on biophysical parameters accounting for the dynamics of water in liver mitochondria.

Methods: Tumors of the central nervous system were induced by intraveinous administration of ethylnitrosourea (ENU) to pregnant females on the 19th day of gestation.