Despite the best available treatments for primary tumors, cancer can return, even after a long disease-free interval. During this period, cancer cells are believed to lie dormant in either primary sites, metastatic sites, or independent sites like bone marrow, effectively escaping adjuvant cytotoxic treatments. To date, little is known about how these cells transition to dormancy, or how they a...

Preclinical data, and an increasing list of clinical investigations, show anti-inflammatory agents to favourably influence the biology of colorectal tumor. We have earlier reported on re-expression of activated immune cells after three days preoperative treatment of patients with colorectal carcinoma, randomized to receive oral NSAID (indomethacin or celebrex). Antisecretory prophylaxis (esomep...

Malignant melanoma cells are known to have altered expression of growth factors compared with normal human melanocytes. These changes probably favor tumor growth and progression and influence the tumor environment. The induction of transforming growth factor beta1 (TGF-beta1), TGF-beta2, and TGF-beta3 expression in malignant melanoma has been reported before, whereas the expression of related b...

Bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) family members, including BMP2, BMP4, and BMP7, are expressed throughout limb development. BMPs have been implicated in early limb patterning as well as in the process of skeletogenesis. However, due to complications associated with early embryonic lethality, particularly for Bmp2 and Bmp4, and with functional redundancy among BMP molecules, it has been difficul...

Bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) are members of the transforming growth factor beta superfamily that exert their effects via type I and type II serine threonine kinase receptors and the SMAD intracellular signaling pathway to regulate diverse biologic processes. Recently, we discovered that the repulsive guidance molecule (RGM) family, including RGMA, RGMB, and RGMC/hemojuvelin (HJV), functio...

Ventral midline cells in the neural tube have distinct properties at different rostrocaudal levels, apparently in response to differential signalling by axial mesoderm. Floor plate cells are induced by sonic hedgehog (SHH) secreted from the notochord whereas ventral midline cells of the rostral diencephalon (RDVM cells) appear to be induced by the dual actions of SHH and bone morphogenetic prot...