Lithium increases proliferation of hippocampal neural stem/progenitor cells and rescues irradiation-induced cell cycle arrest in vitro.

Radiotherapy in children causes debilitating cognitive decline, partly linked to impaired neurogenesis. Irradiation targets primarily cancer cells but also endogenous neural stem/progenitor cells (NSPCs) leading to cell death or cell cycle arrest. Here we evaluated the effects of lithium on proliferation, cell cycle and DNA damage after irradiation of young NSPCs in vitro.

Alpha particle induced DNA damage and repair in normal cultured thyrocytes of different proliferation status.

Childhood exposure to ionizing radiation increases the risk of developing thyroid cancer later in life and this is suggested to be due to higher proliferation of the young thyroid. The interest of using high-LET alpha particles from Astatine-211 ((211)At), concentrated in the thyroid by the same mechanism as (131)I [1], in cancer treatment has increased during recent years because of its high efficiency in inducing biological damage and beneficial dose distribution when compared to low-LET radiation. Most knowledge of the DNA damage response in thyroid is from studies using low-LET irradiation and much less is known of high-LET irradiation.

Specific copy number alterations associated with docetaxel/carboplatin response in ovarian carcinomas.

Background: The continued high recurrence and mortality rate in ovarian cancer is a significant problem and the major obstacle in the treatment of ovarian cancer patients is chemotherapy resistance. Thus, finding predictive markers of chemoresistance and elucidating resistance mechanisms is crucial for individualising treatment and improving survival of ovarian cancer patients.

Materials And Methods: Using array comparative genomic hybridisation (CGH), this pilot study analysed the tumour genomes of patients treated with docetaxel/carboplatin as first-line chemotherapy (6 resistant versus 24 sensitive cases).

Identification of a gene expression signature for survival prediction in type I endometrial carcinoma.

Endometrial cancer is the most common malignancy of the female reproductive tract. In many cases the prognosis is favorable, but 22% of affected women die from the disease. We aimed to study potential differences in gene expression between endometrioid adenocarcinomas from survivors (5-year survival) and nonsurvivors.

Up-regulation of cell cycle arrest protein BTG2 correlates with increased overall survival in breast cancer, as detected by immunohistochemistry using tissue microarray.

Background: Previous studies have shown that the ADIPOR1, ADORA1, BTG2 and CD46 genes differ significantly between long-term survivors of breast cancer and deceased patients, both in levels of gene expression and DNA copy numbers. The aim of this study was to characterize the expression of the corresponding proteins in breast carcinoma and to determine their correlation with clinical outcome.

Methods: Protein expression was evaluated using immunohistochemistry in an independent breast cancer cohort of 144 samples represented on tissue microarrays.