Hexachlorobenzene (HCB) is a lipophilic chemical compound that is widely distributed in the environment. HCB is known to cause liver tumors in experimental animals. In the present study the in vivo effect of HCB treatment on ornithine decarboxylase (ODC) and protein tyrosine kinase (PTK) activities, free polyamine content, and c-Myc, c-Fos, and c-Jun protein levels in rat liver were investigate...

A substantial fraction of neuroblastomas found by mass screening have been suggested to regress spontaneously because of the high incidence of infantile neuroblastomas in the screening population. In this study, 70 neuroblastomas were analyzed for expression of proto-oncogenes related to neuronal differentiation to clarify the biological significance of proto-oncogene expression in the screenin...

We have shown that physiological levels of estradiol exert profound protective effects on the cerebral cortex in ischemia induced by permanent middle cerebral artery occlusion. The major goal of this study was to begin to elucidate potential mechanisms of estradiol action in injury. Bcl-2 is a proto-oncogene that promotes cell survival in a variety of tissues including the brain. Because estrad...

(Igaki et al., 2000) unveils the long anticipated, missing piece of the apoptosome in flies. On page 703 in this issue, in a paper by Colussi et al., Ku-mur, Richardson, and colleagues characterize the first Drosophila members of the Bcl-2 gene family whose function is important for programmed cell death (PCD). The founding member of this gene family was identified as the proto-oncogene upregul...

Rep68 protein, encoded by adeno-associated virus type 2 (AAV), has been previously shown to bind to specific sequences within the viral genome and in human chromosome 19. The effect of AAV Rep protein on human cellular genes is of interest because AAV is being developed as a gene therapy vector. We have identified sequences related to the Rep recognition sequence in the AAV P5 promoter in or ne...

Bcl-2 belongs to a family of apoptosis-regulatory proteins which incorporate into the outer mitochondrial as well as nuclear membranes. The mechanism by which the proto-oncogene product Bcl-2 inhibits apoptosis is thus far elusive. We and others have shown previously that the first biochemical alteration detectable in cells undergoing apoptosis, well before nuclear changes become manifest, is a...

Constitutive photomorphogenesis 9 signalosome (CSN) consists of a total of eight subunits (CSN1-CSN8) in mammalian cells. CSN6 may promote carcinogenesis by positively regulating v‑myc avian myelocytomatosis viral oncogene homolog (Myc) and MDM2 proto‑oncogene stability, and is regarded as a potential target for cancer therapy. Quercetin has a substantial anticancer effect on various human canc...

B chronic lymphocytic leukemia (B-CLL) is characterized by the accumulation of slow-dividing and long-lived monoclonal B cells arrested at the intermediate stage of their differentiation. We previously showed that interleukin 4 (IL-4) not only inhibits but also prevents the proliferation of B-CLL cells. We report here that IL-4 protects the B-CLL cells from death by apoptosis (programmed cell d...

INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES The protein product of the proto-oncogene Bcl-2 is a physiological inhibitor of programmed cell death. The results obtained in our previous researches suggest that apoptosis may be involved in the regulation of an immune response in hyperthyroidism. The most common cause of hyperthyroidism is Graves' disease. The aim of this study was evaluation of expression of Bcl-...