细胞技术

The classification of epithelial tumors of the kidney has undergone considerable change in the last two decades. Systems based on cytoplasmic characteristics and cytogenetic analysis have expanded our understanding of this group of tumors. These new, nontraditional systems have ...

Growth factors are polypeptides that induce cell mitogenicity, and thus play an important role in the etiology and progression of tumors (1). Fibroblast growth factors (FGF) constitute a family of structurally related polypeptides of 146 amino acids, which exhibit a wide spectrum of biol ...

Laser-capture microdissection is a recently discovered state-of-the-art method to obtain cells for genetic analysis. It is a one-step procedure that allows capture of selected cells under direct microscopic visualization.

Von Hippel-Lindau (VHL) disease is an autosomal dominant disorder that predisposes the affected individual to develop characteristic tumors. These include CNS hemangioblastoma, retinal angiomas, endolymphatic sac tumors, pancreatic cysts and tumors, epididymal cystad ...

Cytochrome P450 genes encode drug-metabolizing enzymes that bioactivate a number of widely used anticancer prodrugs. These genes have recently been shown to be useful for prodrug activation-based cancer gene therapy (1). Approaches to identify new P450 gene/prodrug combinations ...

Studies of tumor cell lines expressing individual cytochrome P450 genes are essential for evaluation of the utility of P450 prodrug activation-based cancer gene therapy (1). P450-expressing tumor cells may also be useful to identify novel P450 gene /prodrug combinations (see Chapter ...

Prodrug activation-based cancer gene therapy is a molecular strategy to improve the efficacy of cancer chemotherapy by conferring upon tumor cells the capability to metabolize specific anticancer prodrugs into lethal intracellular toxins. The overall goal of this strategy is to in ...

Although improved significantly, conventional treatment of hematologic malignancy remains inadequate for many patients. Novel treatment approaches could be useful if they would be more efficacious and less toxic. One such approach could involve the manipulation of genes crit ...

Live attenuated viruses used as vaccines are known for their efficacy to elicit protective immunity against viral diseases. More recently, with an increasing number of tumor-associated antigens (TAA) being identified and molecularly cloned (1) the development of vaccines for canc ...

Liver tumors, specially HCC, are among the most common malignancies in the world, and their annual world incidence is about 250,000 cases, with a male to female ratio 4:1 (1). HCC is one of the most important neoplasms in tropical and subtropical regions, particularly among the sub-Saharan African bl ...

Mutation of the p53 tumor-suppressor gene is recognized as one of the most common genetic alterations in human malignancy to date (1). Approximately 60% of human tumors are thought to possess mutation at the p53 locus. Transient overexpression of the wild-type p53 gene in various malignancies h ...

One of the major limitations of conventional cancer chemotherapy is its lack of selectivity; there is cytotoxicity to both tumor cells and normal cells. Genetic prodrug activation therapy (GPAT) uses transcriptional differences between normal and neoplastic cells to drive the sele ...

Gene therapy of cancer includes strategies for augmentation of immunotherapeutic and chemoterapeutic approaches. These strategies mainly involve ex vivo and in vivo cytokine gene transfer, drug sensitization with genes for prodrug delivery, and the use of drug-resistance genes ...

Despite a high effort in the research of malignant brain tumors, the clinical results in treatment of malignant brain tumors are still very poor. Brain tumors are a major cause of morbidity and mortality in the population. New primary brain tumors develop in 2-4 of 100,000 adults each year (1). Recent ev ...

Heat shock proteins (HSPs) are highly conserved proteins present in every living cell. Many members of the HSP family are essential for cellular functions under physiologic conditions, others are induced by various forms of cellular stress (including sudden increase in temperature) to ...

Gene therapy is defined as the alteration of the genetic material of a cell with resultant benefit to a patient. Gene transfer has two broad categories: one in which a therapeutic gene is delivered to the cells with the aim of treating a disease; and another where a marker gene is delivered to label a cell type to d ...

Hybrid cell vaccination is a novel approach for immunotherapy of cancers by inducing specific antitumor immunity (1 ,2). The hybrid cells are generated by electrofusing autologous tumor cells with allogeneic MHC class II expressing cells such as B lymphocytes. The fused cells are irradi ...

Colorectal adenocarcinoma, with more than 150,000 new cases diagnosed in the United States yearly and approximately 50,000 deaths every year, is a significant public health problem. Despite the emergence of new agents, chemotherapeutic options are of limited efficacy, and novel ther ...

Melanoma is a malignant tumor of neuroectodermal origin with an increasing incidence and mortality. It needs to be detected and eliminated early, because melanoma is characterized by its high resistance to the conventional therapies, including surgery and chemotherapy (1-3). On the ot ...

Gene therapy approaches to cancer treatment have been limited by the ability of the delivery vectors to achieve specific high-level expression within tumor cells or the tumor environment following systemic administration. Numerous physical barriers exist in the delivery of thera ...