Regulatory Considerations Toward Orphan Drug Designation and Orphan Drug Exclusivity in the United States and European Union: Structural Similarity, Clinical Superiority/Significant Benefit, and Case Studies.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and European Commission have developed successful orphan drug legislation to promote the research, development, and marketing approval of drugs to treat rare diseases.

Driving gradual endogenous c-myc overexpression by flow-sorting: intracellular signaling and tumor cell phenotype correlate with oncogene expression.

Insulin-exposed rat mammary cancer cells were flow sorted based on a c-myc reporter plasmid encoding a destabilized green fluorescent protein. Sorted cells exhibited gradual increases in c-myc levels. Cells overexpressing c-myc by only 10% exhibited phenotypic changes attributable to c-myc overexpression, such as cell cycle disturbances, increased cell size, and overexpression of the S6 ribosomal protein.

MCF-7 human mammary adenocarcinoma cells exhibit augmented responses to human insulin on a collagen IV surface.

Human mammary cell lines are extensively used for preclinical safety assessment of insulin analogs. However, it is essentially unknown how mitogenic responses can be optimized in mammary cell-based systems. We developed an insulin mitogenicity assay in MCF-7 human mammary adenocarcinoma cells, under low serum (0.