The oral mucosal pellicle is a layer of absorbed salivary proteins, including secretory IgA (SIgA), bound onto the surface of oral epithelial cells and is a useful model for all mucosal surfaces. The mechanism by which SIgA concentrates on mucosal surfaces is examined here using a tissue culture model with real saliva. Salivary mucins may initiate the formation of the mucosal pellicle through i...

The present study assesses the effects of two isoflavones, genistein and glycitein, and equol - a product of intestinal bacterial metabolism of dietary isoflavones, on vitamin D receptor (VDR) expression in an intestinal HT29 cell line. Genistein and glycitein significantly upregulated the VDR transcription and translation in HT29 cells. The effect of equol was less pronounced. Treating HT29 ce...

Phage display represents an attractive screening strategy for the identification of novel, specific binding ligands that could be used for tumor targeting. Recently, a new peptide (CaIX-P1) with affinity for human carbonic anhydrase IX (CAIX) was identified and evaluated. The aim of the present study is to characterize the properties of CaIX-P1 for targeting human colorectal carcinoma and inves...

The serrated pathway to colorectal tumor formation involves oncogenic mutations in the BRAF gene, which are sufficient for initiation of hyperplastic growth but not for tumor progression. A previous analysis of colorectal tumors revealed that overexpression of splice variant Rac1b occurs in around 80% of tumors with mutant BRAF and both events proved to cooperate in tumor cell survival. Here, w...

We have previously shown that cisplatin triggers an early acid sphingomyelinase (aSMase)-dependent ceramide generation concomitantly with an increase in membrane fluidity and induces apoptosis in HT29 cells. The present study further explores the role and origin of membrane fluidification in cisplatin-induced apoptosis. The rapid increase in membrane fluidity following cisplatin treatment was i...

Dicathais orbita is a large Australian marine gastropod known to produce bioactive compounds with anticancer properties. In this research, we used bioassay guided fractionation from the egg mass extract of D. orbita using flash column chromatography and identified fractions containing tyrindoleninone and 6-bromoisatin as the most active against colon cancer cells HT29 and Caco-2. Liquid chromat...

Multicellular resistance, a subtype of therapeutic resistance manifested in cancer cells grown as three-dimensional multicellular masses, such as spheroids in vitro and solid tumors in vivo, occurs with respect to a variety of anticancer treatment strategies including chemotherapy, ionizing radiation, and even host-mediated antibody-dependent cellular cytotoxicity. Previous studies from our lab...

Colorectal cancer is the third most common malignancy in the United States. Improved detection sensitivity of early colorectal neoplasms would have important clinical applications. Herein, we report on using phage display to generate peptide libraries that detect colon carcinoma tissues. To accomplish this, we employed positive selection of a peptide-bearing phage library on poorly differentiat...

Iron-manganese-doped sulfated zirconia nanoparticles with both Lewis and Brønsted acidic sites were prepared by a hydrothermal impregnation method followed by calcination at 650°C for 5 hours, and their cytotoxicity properties against cancer cell lines were determined. The characterization was carried out using X-ray diffraction, thermogravimetric analysis, Fourier transform infrared spectrosco...

BACKGROUND The health benefits of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs), particularly those of the n-3 series are well documented. The mechanisms by which these effects are mediated are not fully clarified. METHODS We used microarrays to assess the effects on gene expression in HT29 colon adenocarcinoma cells of exposure to the n-3 fatty acid eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA). HT29 cells were culture...