The influence of PFK-II overexpression on neuroblastoma patients' survival may be dependent on the particular isoenzyme expressed, PFKFB3 or PFKFB4.

Background/aim: During cancer progression metabolic reprogramming is observed in parallel to the alternation in transcriptional profiles of malignant cells. Recent studies suggest that metabolic isoenzymes of phosphofructokinase II (PFK-II) - PFKFB3 and PFKFB4, often induced in hypoxic environment, significantly contribute to enhancement of glucose metabolism and in consequence cancer progression.

Materials And Methods: Using the publicly available data deposited in the R2 data base we performed a Kaplan-Meyer analysis for cancer patients divided into groups with high and low expression levels of PFKFB3/4, determined based on the median.

Application of case study to introduce medical students to molecular biology techniques used in HIV diagnostics.

Diagnostic molecular biology is a fast developing discipline of laboratory medicine widely used in numerous medical branches such as oncology, hematology, immunology, internal medicine, or infectious diseases, which will certainly have a major impact on clinical medicine in the near future. Nowadays, educational process is forced to face the quickly growing overflow of easily accessible data and properly guide the students not to be lead astray in the information chaos. Hence, in view of the foregoing, it appears obvious that modern medical education should put particular stress on selective acquiring, interpreting, and applying integrated multidisciplinary knowledge rather than on just absorbing and memorizing huge amount of scattered information.