前沿科技及其它

Cellular stress proteins like the classical heat-shock proteins (HSPs) hsp70 (1–3), hsp90 (3) and hsp110 (4); the glucose-regulated proteins gp96/GRP94 (3,5) and grp170 (4); as well as the endoplasmic chaperone calreticulin (6,7) have been shown to induce cytotoxic T-cell responses and pro ...

A growing number of recombinant antibodies is being developed for immunotherapy of cancer (1,2) (see also Chapter 2). Although these recombinant antibodies can exhibit a potent anti-tumoral activity in vitro, efficacy in vivo is often limited by the short serum half-life of these molecules. ...

Clinical use of antibodies or antibody fragments is dependent on highly effective production systems. Antibody fragments like single-chain Fv or Fab have been successfully expressed in microorganisms for more than a decade, and the most commonly used host has been Escherichia coli. The e ...

Many recombinant proteins, particularly proteins with diagnostic and therapeutic potential such as antibodies, lymphokines, receptors, enzymes, and enzyme-inhibitors, are being produced from transformed host cells containing recombinant DNA. The host cells are transfo ...

Fundamental changes in plant molecular biology have taken place during the past decade. Together with the enormous advances made in recombinant DNA technology, protein engineering, plant transformation and tissue culture, plant molecular biology is giving rise to an agricultural ...

Tumor-specific markers are important in identifying and tracking malignant cells. In this regard, functionally rearranged immunoglobulin variable (V) region genes in B-cell tumors fulfill and extend these criteria. V genes provide signature motifs in tumor cells and can delineate ...

Southern blotting is a method whereby DNA fragments in the gel are denatured by soaking in an alkali solution, carried out of the gel, and transferred onto a membrane. After drying the membrane, the DNA is fixed irreversibly. The net result is a replica on the membrane of the DNA fragment pattern from the aga ...

The simplest guide to cell proliferation that can be obtained by the use of flow cytometry is the S-phase fraction (SPF) calculated from DNA histograms. Measurement of such histograms was one of the earliest applications of flow cytometry, being first reported in the late 1960s. SPF is the fraction ...

The goal of Western blotting, or more correctly, immunoblotting, is to identify with a specific antibody a particular antigen within a complex mixture of proteins that has been fractionated in a polyacrylamide gel and immobilized onto a membrane. Immunoblotting can be used to determine a num ...

There is now compelling evidence to show that tumors, once believed to be a homogeneous mass of abnormally proliferative cells, comprise a heterogeneous population of transformed cells resembling the hierarchically organized populations in the corresponding tissue. At the top of t ...

Cancer cells do not share equal tumor-initiating potential. Only cancer stem cells (CSCs) can initiate cancer, which is important clinically because they should be eradicated to treat cancer patients. The purpose of experimental methods for identification of CSC is to isolate CSCs among ...

Neural stem cells (NSC) self-renew and are multipotent, producing neurons and glia. Recent studies have shown that brain tumors (BT) contain cells that, like NSC, self-renew and are multipotent, producing the different types of cells found within the brain tumors. These brain tumor stem cells a ...

The brain tumor stem cell (BTSC) hypothesis is based on the premise that there is a subpopulation of cells within tumors with tumorigenic and pluripotent properties. BTSC are believed to be responsible for both the initiation of brain tumors and their resistance to current therapeutic modal ...

The cancer stem cell (CSC) theory posits that only a small population of tumor cells within the tumor has the ability to reinitiate tumor development and is responsible for tumor homeostasis and progression. Tumor initiation is a defining property of putative CSCs, which have been reported in b ...

Recent technical progress in the field of cancer stem/progenitor cell research revealed that these malignant cells may provide critical roles for primary tumor growth, metastases at distant tissues and organs, treatment resistance, and disease relapse. The precise molecular onc ...

Prostate cancer is a major health concern in the Western world. Prostate cancer stem cells have been implicated to be involved in, if not solely responsible for prostate cancer initiation and relapse after surgical, hormonal, and chemotherapy. Until now, the identity of the presumed prostate ...

Cell death by apoptosis was first identified based on morphological changes reproduced with great fidelity in cells of widely different origin when exposed to a death stimulus. These changes include condensation of the cytosol and the nuclear chromatin, blebbing of the plasma membrane, ...

Telomeres are the structures at the ends of chromosomes, composed of repetitive sequences and associated proteins, which cap chromosome ends to maintain genomic stability. These structures are maintained by the enzyme complex telomerase in germ cells and some stem cells, but are absent in ...

In spite of advances in the fields of immunohistochemistry and molecular biology, in clinical practice much of the assessment of metastases still relies on light microscopy using conventional histological stains. This is not so much a reflection of a reluctance by histopathologists to a ...

Immunocytochemistry may be defined as the identification of a cell- or tissue-bound antigen in situ, by means of a specific antibody-antigen reaction, tagged microscopically by a visible label. Successful immunocytochemistry therefore requires (1) preservation of the antigen in a ...