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Carbohydrate Acts As Tumor Suppressor
Scientists at Burnham Institute for Medical Research (Burnham) have discovered that specialized complex sugar molecules (glycans) that anchor cells into place act as tumor suppressors in breast and prostate cancers. These glycans play a critical role in cell adhesion in normal cells, and their decrease or loss leads to increased cell migration by invasive cancer cells and metastasis. An increase in expression of the enzyme that produces these glycans, í²3GnT1, resulted in a significant reduction in tumor activity. The research was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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Obama Starts Interviewing Supreme Court Candidates
President Obama on Tuesday started interviewing potential Supreme Court nominees, the Wall Street Journal reports. Senior White House adviser David Axelrod on Tuesday said that the administration is looking for a candidate who will give the powerless and disenfranchised people "a fair shake." Conservatives have said that the nominee will inevitably be a "judicial activist" because Obama has said that he wants to nominate a candidate who can use past experience and empathy for the underrepresented populations to help guide court decisions.Obama has started calling Republican senators in an effort to prevent the "bruising battles" past Supreme Court nominations have encountered during the confirmation process, the Journal reports. Obama called Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) on Tuesday, which Cornyn said was a "nice gesture." Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) spoke to Obama last week. Coburn said, "I don"t know that it"s going to be contentious," adding, "A prudent man would say, "I"m going to have a couple of Supreme Court nominees. Maybe I want to defuse the thing, the first one, so I can do what I want to do (with) the second one."" Axelrod said that Obama has spoken to 15 senators from both parties (Weisman/Bendavid, Wall Street Journal, 5/20).
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Merck Serono Initiates Phase III Study Of Stimuvax In Breast Cancer
Merck Serono, a division of Merck KGaA, Darmstadt, Germany, announced the initiation of its global Phase III clinical study of the therapeutic cancer vaccine Stimuvax® (BLP25 liposome vaccine, L-BLP25) in patients with advanced, inoperable breast cancer. The STRIDEa study will determine if Stimuvax can extend progression-free survival in patients treated with hormonal therapy who have hormone receptor-positive, locally advanced, recurrent or metastatic breast cancer. Overall survival, quality of life, tumor response and safety will also be assessed in this study. The STRIDE study will be supervised by an expert Steering Committee and is sponsored by Merck Serono, which is leading the development of Stimuvax.
Diagnostics

Enzyme-Equipped Liposomes Embedded In Polymer Capsules As A Novel Biomedical Transport System

When cells cannot carry out the tasks required of them by our bodies, the result is disease. Nanobiotechnology researchers are looking for ways to allow synthetic systems take over simple cellular activities when they are absent from the cell. This requires transport systems that can encapsulate medications and other substances and release them in a controlled fashion at the right moment. The transporter must be able to interact with the surroundings in order to receive the signal to unload its cargo. A team led by Frank Caruso at the University of Melbourne has now developed a microcontainer that can hold thousands of individual "carrier units" - a "capsosome". As they report in the journal Angewandte Chemie, these are polymer capsules in which liposomes have been embedded to form subcompartments. Currently, the primary type of nanotransporter used for drugs is the capsule: Polymer capsules form stable containers that are semipermeable, which allows for communication with the surrounding medium. However, these are not suitable for the transport of small molecules because they can escape. Liposomes are good at protecting small drug molecules; however, they are often unstable and impermeable to substances from the environment. The Australian researchers have now combined the advantages of both systems in their capsosomes. Capsosomes are produced by several steps. First, a layer of polymer is deposited onto small silica spheres. This polymer contains building blocks modified with cholesterol. Liposomes that have been loaded with an enzyme can be securely anchored to the cholesterol units and thus attached to the polymer film. Subsequently, more polymer layers are added and then cross-linked by disulfide bridges into a gel by means of a specially developed, very gentle cross-linking reaction. In the final step, the silica core is etched away without damaging the sensitive cargo. Experiments with an enzyme as model cargo demonstrated that the liposomes remain intact and the cargo does not escape. Addition of a detergent releases the enzyme in a functional state. By means of the enzymatic reaction, which causes a color change of the solution, it was possible to determine the number of liposome compartments to be about 8000 per polymer capsule. "Because the capsosomes are biodegradable and nontoxic", says Brigitte Staedler, a senior researcher in the group, "they would also be suitable for use as resorbable synthetic cell organelles and for the transport of drugs." In addition, the scientists are planning to encapsulate liposomes filled with different enzymes together and to equip them with specific "receivers" which would allow the individual cargo to be released in a targeted fashion. This would make it possible to use enzymatic reaction cascades for catalytic reaction processes. Author: Frank Caruso, University of Melbourne (Australia) Title: A Microreactor with Thousands of Subcompartments: Enzyme-Loaded Liposomes within Polymer Capsules Angewandte Chemie International Edition 2009, 48, No. 24, 4359-4362, doi: 10.1002/anie.200900386 Frank Caruso Wiley-Blackwell


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