Saturday, March 19, 2011

Epigenetics in Cancer: What’s the Future? Promising Drugs?

Tags: Epigenetics in Cancer Treatments, Review, Future Drugs, Causes, Histone, DNA Methylation, Demethylation, Cell Dissociation, Apotheosis Cancer Cell Death, Vitamin D Role Health and Cancer

Although some of you will not be able to understand the various terms and are not familiar with the various drugs as I am not, I thought that some of you would appreciate that we are getting closer to understanding more completely how our cells can become cancerous and increase into tumors and spread throughout our body.


The key thing in our body that can lead to cancer for our cells to dissociate, a topic not discussed in the article, which makes our DNA more susceptible to attack by outside forces such as methylation or demethylation of our genes to deactivate our ability to fight cancer.


Unfortunately many of you are either too busy or not interested in reading technical articles because it takes time and is often not written well enough for us to understand.


I just want you to understand the role vitamin D3 and its metabolites play in reducing the chance for cancer as a recent study by the University of California, San Diego, did in Texas with thousands of seniors. They were shocked that it took 4,000 IU of vitamin D3 daily to largely stop cancer production by 50 percent.


Once cancer is advanced, it puts out proteins and enzymes that can block the action of vitamin D3 by attaching to the same receptor or degrading vitamin D metabolite so it behooves all of us to consider taking vitamin D3 daily at elevated levels. Because it is needed in every cell in our bodies and not just for bones, taking 4,000 IU or higher is really not that much.


The unit IU is International Units used for vitamin D3 capsules is based on its molecular weight instead of the simpler weight used in many medications and over the counter supplements. The amount in your blood at midlevel of 50 nanograms per milliliter is 50 billionth of a gram per milliliter. A milliliter is one thousand of a liter.


Michael F. Holick, Ph.D., M.D. Boston University Medical School, recently published the Book The Vitamin D Solution: A 3-Step Strategy to Cure Our Most Common Health Problem, one of the pioneers in defunded vitamin D research speculated that taking the well known fact that normal cells have to separate from the cluster of cells to become cancerous. He knows that vitamin D causes cancerous cells to commit suicide or apotheosis.


In the article below the scientists discussed the DNA wrapped around the irregular alkaline histone proteins which can be pictured as a spool wrapped by DNA threads. Changes in the histone proteins may make it easier for the DNA to unravel making cancer formation easier by way of methylation or demethylation process which turns genes off or on.


It is also known that one of the deadliest and usually fatal cancer is ovarian cancer. We know that this cancer destroys vitamin D so post treatment with vitamin D is largely ineffective because it is usually detected too late when tumor becomes large.


As I have often repeated, get the inflammation test, the C-Reactive Protein Test which is as cheap as a cholesterol lipids test. It can detect infections, and inflammations resulting from cancer and fresh plaque in your arteries.


Whenever there is an infection, cancer, plaque formation, or uric acid inflammation of blood vessels when we consume too much High Fructose Corn Syrup, the inflammatory Cytokines [C] are produced. Corn sugar is enzymatically converted to fructose and glucose by a Japanese process developed in the 1973.


It was not that popular until Reagan gave corn a huge subsidy which made it as cheap as dirt so it is now in just about everything we eat at Fast Food joints and restaurants, especially Colas such as Coke and Pepsi, which gave us the huge increase in obesity and overweight Americans since 1985.


All the wealth increase in the 1980s was made by the top one percent by huge tax cuts and deficits. The sunscreens with blocking the penetrating UVA increased melanoma. Some tanning salon owners are finally saying the Dermatologists and Big Pharma are using propaganda in ads and comments to deemphasize to attributes of taking vitamin D3 supplements or getting the same from tanning salons during the winter.


Remember Corporations hire psychologists to optimize their propaganda, and professors to support their views. Trust Us, We’re Experts book has reams of examples showing this happens all the time. Yes, even the New York Times gives us propaganda. There have always been rumors that the CIA propagandist occupy the basement at the New York Times.


So read the whole article without a point of view. Hint, the later paragraphs give the most important information, thanks to the banks of editors who write the headlines and the first six paragraphs on the front page and throughout the newspaper. In the recount of the Bush Coup, the front page headline in huge block letters was Bush Would Have Won Anyway. I came to an opposite conclusion after reading 5 jump pages!


The George W. Bush Coup with the help of Jeb Bush taking 100,000 Democratic voters off the voting roll illegally and especially the Scalia Supreme Court stopping the recount. The guild of newspapers found that Gore would have won with any permutation of how the recount votes were counted! It is ironic that those who profess the most religiousity also violate the teachings of Jesus in the Christian religion and even turned the religion on its head by the radical Evangelicals reversing the teachings of Jesus during the late eighteen eighties or the Renaissance Popes such as the Borgia family. A series starts on Showtime soon starring


Jim Kawakami, March 19, 2011, http://jimboguy.blogspot.com


REVIEW ARTICLE

Epigenetics in Cancer: What's the Future?


By Yanis Boumber, MD, PhD1, Jean-Pierre J. Issa, MD2 | March 16, 2011


1 Hematology/Oncology Fellowship Program, Division of Cancer Medicine, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas

2 Department of Leukemia, The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas


ABSTRACT: Epigenetics is a rapidly expanding field that focuses on stable changes in gene expression that are not accompanied by changes in DNA sequence and that are mediated primarily by DNA methylation and histone modifications. Disruption of the epigenome is a fundamental mechanism in cancer, and several epigenetic drugs that have proved to prolong survival and to be less toxic than conventional chemotherapy were recently approved by the FDA for cancer treatment. These include azacitidine (Vidaza), decitabine (Dacogen), vorinostat (Zolinza), and romidepsin (Istodax).


Promising results of combination clinical trials with DNA methylation inhibitors and histone deacetylase inhibitors have recently been reported, and data are emerging that describe molecular determinants of clinical responses. Despite significant advances, challenges remain, including a lack of predictive markers, unclear mechanisms of response and resistance, and rare responses in solid tumors. Preclinical studies are ongoing with novel classes of agents that target various components of the epigenetic machinery. In this review, we focus on recent clinical and translational data in the epigenetics field that have potential in cancer therapy.


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Epigenetic mechanisms; Source: National Institute of Health

http://www.cancernetwork.com/cancer-genetics/content/article/10165/1822105 Epigenetics is defined as the study of stable changes in gene expression that are not accompanied by changes in DNA sequence.[1] Epigenetic changes are important biological processes with relevance to all multicellular organisms. Studies in various models have shown that epigenetic regulation is critical for proper embryogenesis and development. Several mechanisms of epigenetic change have been described, and all seem to be interdependent to some degree. DNA methylation, posttranslational modifications of histones, and chromatin remodeling enzymes mediate epigenetic changes in many organisms.


It has become clear that disruption of the epigenetic machinery plays a fundamental role in cancer development. Tumors often exhibit global hypomethylation, hypermethylation of CpG islands, and genome-wide alterations in the levels of histone modifications. These abnormalities are associated with widespread changes in gene expression, which are thought to contribute to tumor formation by affecting oncogenes and tumor suppressor genes.[1]


What Is Epigenetic Therapy?
The understanding that epigenetic changes are prevalent in cancer and play a causative role in its biology has led to the development of new therapeutic approaches that target the epigenetic machinery. The first successful drugs developed as epigenetic agents were DNA methyltransferase inhibitors; these were followed by histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDIs). Both classes of drugs aim at reversing gene silencing and demonstrate antitumor activity in vitro and in vivo. Several other classes of drugs have been developed that target various other components of the epigenetic machinery; one such class is the histone methyltransferases, with new drugs in this class currently in early preclinical development Click on Table below to get readable table. (Table 1). … http://www.cancernetwork.com/cancer-genetics/content/article/10165/1822105?pageNumber=1 10 more pages!

1 comment:

  1. Hello,

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    DNA Methylation

    ReplyDelete