PURPOSE A pterygium has long been considered as a degenerative condition. After p53 protein was found to be abnormally expressed in the epithelium, researchers suggested that a pterygium may be a tumor, but additional evidence is required to support this hypothesis. Aberrant methylation of the p16 gene (CDKN2A) promoter and resultant gene silencing play important roles in the pathogenesis of ma...

PURPOSE Inactivation of p16 by aberrant methylation of CpG islands is a frequent event in carcinomas and precancerous lesions of various organs, including the stomach. The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between p16 methylation and malignant transformation of human gastric dysplasia (DYS) based on follow-up endoscopic screening in a high-risk population. EXPERIMENTAL DESI...

BACKGROUND The p16(INK4a) gene methylation has been reported to be a major tumorigenic mechanism. METHODS We evaluated the methylation status of the p16(INK4a) genes in 231 invasive breast cancer and 90 intraductal carcinoma specimens using a methylation-specific polymerase chain reaction and p16 protein expression using immunohistochemistry. The quantity of cell-free methylated p16(INK4a) DN...

We have previously established the efficacy of adenoviral gene delivery vectors for the treatment of bladder carcinoma in vivo. In the present work, we developed a gene therapy strategy for bladder cancer based on the replacement of the tumor suppressor p16, which is known to be mutated or deleted in a variety of human tumors, including those derived from the bladder. Previous reports have demo...

The Rb/p16 tumor-suppressive pathway is abrogated frequently in human tumors, either through inactivation of the Rb or p16INK4a/CDKN2/MTS1 tumor-suppressor proteins, or through alteration or overexpression of the cyclin D1 or cyclin-dependent kinase 4 oncoproteins. We reported previously that the p16 gene was genetically inactivated in 82% of pancreatic carcinomas. Nearly half of these inactiva...

Genetic testing for melanoma has yet to enter routine clinical use because of the scarcity of available data on the effect of test reporting. A prospective study of 59 members of Utah CDKN2A/p16 mutation-positive pedigrees was conducted to establish the effect of CDKN2A/p16 genetic test reporting on melanoma early detection intentions and behaviors (total body skin examination and skin self-exa...

The p16 gene (P16, MTS1, CDKN2) encodes a negative regulator of the cell cycle. Molecular genetic techniques have been used to explore the role of p16 in normal development and cancer. Two transcripts derived from the p16 gene with distinct protein coding potentials are described. The previously undescribed transcript form has the same exons 2 and 3 as the p16-encoding mRNA but contains a diffe...

The tendency of countries to accumulate public debt has been rationalized in models of political disagreement and lack of commitment. We analyze in a benchmark model how the evolution of public debt is affected by lack of commitment per se. While commitment introduces indeterminacy in the level of debt, lack of commitment creates incentives for debt to converge to specific levels. One of the le...

Job Loss Fears and (Extremist) Party Identification: First Evidence from Panel Data There is a large body of literature analyzing the relationship between objective economic conditions and voting behavior, but there is very little evidence of how perceived economic insecurity impacts on political preferences. Using seventeen years of household panel data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we...

Voting procedures eliminating candidates sequentially and one-at-a-time based on repeated ballots are superior to well-known single-round voting rules: if voters are strategic the former will induce the Condorcet winner in unique equilibrium, whereas the latter may fail to select it. In addition, when there is no Condorcet winner the outcome of sequential elimination voting always belongs to th...