前沿科技及其它

The appearance of the breast on mammography varies among women, reflecting variations in tissue composition. Stroma and epithelium attenuate x-rays more than fat and appear light on a mammogram, which we refer to here as “ mammographic density, ” while fat appears dark. We show evidence that mamm ...

Annual screening mammograms have been shown to be cost-effective and are credited for the decline in mortality of breast cancer. New technologies including breast magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) may further improve early breast cancer detection in asymptomatic women. Serum tumor m ...

Bladder cancer is a common disease, whose major risk factors include smoking and occupational exposure to chemicals. Superficial bladder cancer has significant healthcare cost implications due to the need for repeated cystoscopic surveillance. Chemical carcinogens can unde ...

The transforming growth factor (TGF)-β signaling pathway plays a critical role in breast cancer development and progression. Limited data from human studies, however, are currently available to link biomarkers in this pathway directly to the risk and survival of breast cancer. Most of the p ...

The cause of the majority of cancers is poorly understood albeit multifactorial. The ultimate consequence of etiological factors where defined is an alteration within the cellular genotype, which is manifested in the cells acquiring malignant phenotype. There are several environ ...

Lung cancer is the world's leading cause of cancer death. It is primarily due to the inhalation of carcinogens and highly accessible to prevention by diminishing exposures to lung carcinogens. Most important will be the complete cessation of exposure to cigarette smoke (first and second hand) ...

The detection of unknown mutations has proved complex and time consuming, and this is certainly the case for HNPCC. Germline mutations have been detected in five of the six human DNA mismatch repair genes (in hMLH1, hMSH2, hMSH6, hPMS1, hPMS2, but not hMSH3) in HNPCC patients (1-7) with hMLH1 and hMSH2 bei ...

Over the past decade, the genes that underlie the development of many human diseases have been identified and the diseases causing mutations within these genes have been unveiled. Many genetic alterations responsible for a variety of human disorders have been characterized. These alte ...

The insulin-like growth factor II (IGFII) growth control pathway is comprised of three major components: IGFII ligand, insulin-like growth factor I receptor (IGFIR), and insulin-like growth factor II receptor (IGFIIR). IGFIR and IGFIIR work together to maintain constant circulating ...

Familial colorectal cancer (FCC) is a hereditary form of colorectal cancer that accounts for 15-50% of all colorectal cancers (1,2). FCC patients generally have one or two family members affected with colon polyps or cancer. A mutation (I1307K) in the APC gene has been associated with colorectal c ...

Juvenile polyposis (JP) is a rare dominantly inherited tumor predisposition syndrome, the typical lesion being a benign hamartomatous intestinal polyp with dilated crypts. Solitary juvenile polyps are relatively common in childhood, and appear not to be associated with neoplasia ...

The signaling pathways mediated by the transforming growth factor-β (TGF-β) family of factors are implicated in a wide array of biological processes including cell differentiation and proliferation, determination of cell fate during embryogenesis, cell adhesion and cell death. T ...

While Peutz-Jeghers syndrome (PJS) has been acknowledged as a clinical entity for decades (1,2), the molecular background for the disease has been unraveled only very recently. PJS has two cardinal features: First, many but not all patients display mucocutaneous melanin pigmentation th ...

A vast amount of genome sequencing data has become available over the past few years and methods to facilitate high-throughput analysis of large sets of genes and samples have been developed to localize novel genes related to human cancer. As advanced robotic applications have made it possible ...

Cowden syndrome is a rare dominantly inherited condition with predisposition to benign hamartomatous polyposis of the intestine, as well as malignant tumors of the breast and thyroid, and possibly some other cancer types. Other features include macrocephaly and dysplastic cerebe ...

The molecular analysis of human cancer is complicated by the difficulty in obtaining pure populations of tumor cells to study. One traditional method of obtaining a pure representation has been establishing cancer cell lines from primary tumors. However, this technique is time consumi ...

Most epidemiological studies (1-7) support a protective role of aspirin and nonsteroidal antiinflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) against colorectal cancer. People who (by their report) take aspirin regularly have about a 50% decrease in the incidence (3,4) and mortality (1,2) from colorectal ...

Immunohistochemistry involves the binding of an antibody to a cellular or tissue antigen of interest and then visualization of the bound product by a detection system. With the ever-increasing number of antibodies against cellular epitopes, immunohistochemistry is an extremely u ...

The mucosa of the colon occupies 25% of the intestinal wall, from the muscularis mucosa to the lumen-lining epithelium, and contains a variety of cell types, predominantly B and T lymphocytes, but also monocytes, mast cells, and macrophages (1,2). These cells secrete a variety of cytokines, includ ...

Tumor cell interactions with the local microenvironment influence a range of cellular activities. A ubiquitous and important “;signal”; for tumor cells is the surrounding protein stroma, the extracellular matrix (ECM). This protein network varies in composition and structure thr ...