[Activity and efficacy of vinflunine in third line in patients with advanced urothelial carcinoma of the renal pelvis, progressing to immunotherapy.].

The clinical case concerns a 72-years-old woman diagnosed with an urothelial carcinoma of the renal pelvis with hepatic and lymph node metastases. The disease was rapidly progressing to a first line of platinum-based chemotherapy and to a second line with immunotherapy; a clinical and instrumental benefit was then observed with vinflunine used as third line regimen.

In vitro studies of DNA mismatch repair proteins.

The ability to monitor and characterize DNA mismatch repair activity in various mammalian cells is important for understanding mechanisms involved in mutagenesis and tumorigenesis. Since mismatch repair proteins recognize mismatches containing both normal and chemically altered or damaged bases, in vitro assays must accommodate a variety of mismatches in different sequence contexts. Here we describe the construction of DNA mismatch substrates containing G:T or O(6)meG:T mismatches, the purification of recombinant native human MutSα (MSH2-MSH6) and MutLα (MLH1-PMS2) proteins, and in vitro mismatch repair and excision assays that can be adapted to study mismatch repair in nuclear extracts from mismatch repair proficient and deficient cells.

BAG3 protein delocalisation in prostate carcinoma.

Despite the progressive increase of early diagnosis, a subset of prostate cancers show a metastasizing and lethal course, not always predictable upon the traditional prognostic parameters. The object of this study was to investigate the role of the survival co-chaperone protein BAG3 as a new prognostic marker for prostate cancer. BAG3 was detected by immunohistochemistry in 55 specimens of surgically removed prostate carcinomas and in 15 surgical specimens of non-neoplastic prostate tissues.

Depression and recovery of daily life autonomy in patients with stroke receiving home rehabilitative treatment.

Background: The object of this study was to evaluate the prevalence of post stroke depression and its possible role as a predictive negative factor in patients receiving home rehabilitation treatment.

Methods: We analyzed 103 patients with stroke by correlating comorbidities, clinical and blood test parameters and characteristics of the lesion with depression class identified according to the Hamilton scale and the outcome of the rehabilitation program.

Results: A significant association between hypertension and post-stroke severe depression emerged in the female patients.

The mismatch repair-mediated cell cycle checkpoint response to fluorodeoxyuridine.

The loss of DNA mismatch repair (MMR) is responsible for hereditary nonpolyposis colorectal cancer and a subset of sporadic tumors. Acquired resistance or tolerance to some anti-cancer drugs occurs when MMR function is impaired. 5-Fluorouracil (FU), an anti-cancer drug used in the treatment of advanced colorectal and other cancers, and its metabolites are incorporated into RNA and DNA and inhibit thymidylate synthase resulting in depletion of dTTP and incorporation in DNA of uracil.

Lack of strand-specific repair of UV-induced DNA lesions in three genes of the archaeon Sulfolobus solfataricus.

In all organisms, specialized systems are devoted to repair of DNA lesions induced by exposure to UV light. In both Eucarya and Bacteria, UV-induced pyrimidine dimers in the transcribed strand of active genes are repaired at a faster rate compared to the non-transcribed strand and the rest of the genome. Preferential repair of transcribed strands requires the Transcription-Repair Coupling Factor in Escherichia coli and the CSA and CSB proteins in humans.

Functional interaction of reverse gyrase with single-strand binding protein of the archaeon Sulfolobus.

Reverse gyrase is a unique hyperthermophile-specific DNA topoisomerase that induces positive supercoiling. It is a modular enzyme composed of a topoisomerase IA and a helicase domain, which cooperate in the ATP-dependent positive supercoiling reaction. Although its physiological function has not been determined, it can be hypothesized that, like the topoisomerase-helicase complexes found in every organism, reverse gyrase might participate in different DNA transactions mediated by multiprotein complexes.

Reverse gyrase recruitment to DNA after UV light irradiation in Sulfolobus solfataricus.

Induction of DNA damage triggers a complex biological response concerning not only repair systems but also virtually every cell function. DNA topoisomerases regulate the level of DNA supercoiling in all DNA transactions. Reverse gyrase is a peculiar DNA topoisomerase, specific to hyperthermophilic microorganisms, which contains a helicase and a topoisomerase IA domain that has the unique ability to introduce positive supercoiling into DNA molecules.

Transcriptional response to DNA damage in the archaeon Sulfolobus solfataricus.

Exposure of cells to DNA-damaging agents triggers a complex biological response involving cell cycle arrest and modulation of gene expression. Genomic sequencing has revealed the presence of archaeal genes homologous to components of the eucaryal nucleotide excision repair (NER) pathway, which is involved in the repair of ultraviolet (UV) light-induced DNA damage. However, the events involved in the cell response to UV irradiation and their regulation have not been studied in Archaea.