Colon cancer: genomics and apoptotic events
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C. Rupnarain
Abstract
Colon cancer is the third most common cancer globally. The risk of developing colon cancer is influenced by a number of factors that include age and diet, but is primarily a genetic disease, resulting from oncogene overexpression and tumour suppressor gene inactivation. The induction and progression of the disease is briefly outlined, as are the cellular changes that occur in its progression. While colon cancer is uniformly amenable to surgery if detected at the early stages, advanced carcinomas are usually lethal, with metastases to the liver being the most common cause of death. Oncogenes and genetic mutations that occur in colon cancer are featured. The molecules and signals that act to eradicate or initiate the apoptosis cascade in cancer cells, are elucidated, and these include caspases, Fas, Bax, Bid, APC, antisense hTERT, PUMA, 15-LOX-1, ceramide, butyrate, tributyrin and PPARγ, whereas the molecules which promote colon cancer cell survival are p53 mutants, Bcl-2, Neu3 and COX-2. Cancer therapies aimed at controlling colon cancer are reviewed briefly.
Copyright © 2004 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG
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Articles in the same Issue
- Highlight: 3rd General IPS Meeting/International Conference on Protease inhibitors
- Colon cancer: genomics and apoptotic events
- Interaction of calpastatin with calpain: a review
- Cathepsin L and Arg/Lys aminopeptidase: a distinct prohormone processing pathway for the biosynthesis of peptide neurotransmitters and hormones
- Searching for the most effective screening system to identify cell-active inhibitors of β-secretase
- Accumulation of mini-plasmin in the cerebral capillaries causes vascular invasion of the murine brain by a pneumotropic influenza A virus: implications for influenza-associated encephalopathy
- Protease degradomics: mass spectrometry discovery of protease substrates and the CLIP-CHIP, a dedicated DNA microarray of all human proteases and inhibitors
- Human cathepsin F: expression in baculovirus system, characterization and inhibition by protein inhibitors
- Proteinases participating in the processing and activation of prolegumain in primary cultured rat macrophages
- Human kallikrein 6 activity is regulated via an autoproteolytic mechanism of activation/inactivation
- Growth phase-dependent production of a cell wall-associated elastinolytic cysteine proteinase by Staphylococcus epidermidis
- Evidence for an interaction between leptin, T cell costimulatory antigens CD28, CTLA-4 and CD26 (dipeptidyl peptidase IV) in BCG-induced immune responses of leptin- and leptin receptor-deficient mice
- Characterisation of a highly specific, endogenous inhibitor of cysteine protease from Staphylococcus epidermidis, a new member of the staphostatin family
- Identification of cysteine protease inhibitors that belong to cystatin family 1 in the cellular slime mold Dictyostelium discoideum
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