Bridging my academic curriculum into the real world of therapeutic research..

Recent reports in the literature demonstrating the importance of use of molecular biology methods and imaging technologies into the study of cellular functions and signaling networks in cancer/stem-cell niche /microenvironment. After all, molecular tools and technologies are very important to enhance our research work easier and faster as well as stay ahead of the competition…(.., I believe?).

After the exams I would like to
- survey what’re the molecular biology techniques and imaging technologies are being used to study the field of cancer/ stem-cell niche /microenvironment, as well as
- survey of up-dated efforts to adapt (the research results) and development of cancer therapeutics, if any.

The initiative would be helpful for me to bridge as well as correlate theoretical knowledge’s from the academic curriculum into the real world of therapeutic research, hope.

Secretory factors

Well, my curiosities on the stem-cell niche, their locations and their interconnecting functions etc are just ignited me to look are there any ‘secretory factors’ play role for this part. Indeed.. significantly there are some ‘secretory factors’ which play important role in the disorders of stem-cell niche.

References: (from top to below)

For picture 1:

Please click here for complete paper from David T. Scadden

For pictures 2, 3 and 4:

Please click here for complete paper from Michael L. Cher, etal

any opinions?

thought provoking glossaries and reference pitures

Today while started to read some articles about stem-cell nice interestingly I came across to read some elegant, thought provoking glossaries, from the team Rosandra Kaplan

Here are those:

Osteoblastic niche*: is also referred to as endosteal niche, located within the Bone Marrow that regulates stem-cell cycling and promotes quiescence. This niche is also associated with the vascular niche.

Vascular niche: a second niche for Haematopoietic Stem Cells (HSC)within the Bone Marrow. This niche is also associated with the Osteoblasic niche and their cellular subsequent process. It is thought to be where activated HSCs migrate to for proliferation and egress to the circulation.

Ischaemic niche*: site in the periphery, which direct site-specific recruitment of bone-marrow-derived cells (BMDCs) for tissue repair and new vessel formation.

Primary tumour niche: where BMDCs home to sites within tumours, where they are integral for angiogenic processes promoting growth and progression of malignancy.

Pre-metastatic niche: primary tumour directs early changes occurring within sites of future metastasis prior to the arrival of disseminating tumour cells, which lead to the formation of clusters of VEGF receptor 1+ Haematopoietic Progenitor Cells (HPC) and priming of the tissue to receive tumour cells.

- >secondary tumour or metastasis<-

Stem-cell niche: a physiologically defined microenvironment, both supportive and regulatory, that via cell–cell interaction can regulate balanced self renewal, differentiation and stem-cell quiescence.


-> BMDCs i.e., bone-marrow-derived cells is a term which is meant for both haematopoietic and endothelial bone-marrow-derived cells.


(*) both the ischaemic and the osteoblastic niche are thought to be act as physiological niche, apart from the general / normal stem-cell niche.

References: (from top to below)

For pictures 1 and 2:

Please click here for complete paper from David T. Scadden

For picture 3:

Please click here for complete paper from Rosandra N. Kaplan, etal

Seems like they’re interconnecting each other niche / functions by overlapping sets of molecules and pathways as well as due to influence of their surrounding factors.

what's your view?

finally ..it's happened..!

Until this date I have managed to do the posting with the help of using the portable USB disc (copying the PDF articles from university computer room and bringing them to home computer…reading and posting…). After a long time follow-ups and discussion, last week i got the internet connection at home computer. Though the speed are very dump and no fast (so its helping me to learn about how to optimise computer memory as well as way to gear up the internet speed,...), however, now I am getting some kinds of (pseudo) satisfaction that I am having internet connection at home computer, finally!!!

'spin-off' blog

Initially I posted here few nice web sites on the field of stem-cell biology, for quick reference purpose. after got feeling of ‘the work is not complete yet..’ just I continued and finally realised that there are lots of web sites are floating on difference places in both good condition as well as broken, un-updated form. As a result here is a new blog.

http://stemcellresources.blogspot.com/.

Please share your opinion!

List of rare diseases in stem-cells

The article ignited more enthusiasm to start to correlate with the field of stem-cell research i.e. whether the stem-cell community has focused any research on the rare diseases or not.

Though there are no direct research efforts on this area, however, some labs have focused on the rare diseases aspects while concentrating on stem-cell transplantation especially haematopoietic stem-cells and the associated lymphoma’s /leukemia’s

This is the list of diseases currently covered:


-Acute myeloid leukaemia (AML)
-FGFR1 tyrosine kinase gene – Myelo Proliferative Disorders (MPD)
-Fanconi anaemia
-Paroxysmal nocturnal hemoglobinuria (PNH)
-Childhood chronic myeloid leukemia (CML),
-Plasma cell leukemia
-Childhood myelodysplastic syndrome (MDS)
-Primary familial and congenital polycythaemia (PFCP)
-Infants primary hemophagocytic lymphohistiocytosis (HLH),
-Urothelium carcinomas
-Diamond Blackfan anemia (DBA)
-Primary mediastinal large B-cell non-Hodgkin's lymphoma
-Hepatosplenic T-cell lymphoma
-Aspergillus tracheobronchitis
-De novo erythroleukemia (EL)
-Granulocytic sarcoma (GS),
-Chronic granulocytic leukaemia (CGL)
-Primary cardiac myxosarcoma
-T-prolymphocytic leukemia (T-PLL)
-Congenital amegakaryocytic thrombocytopenia (CAMT)
-Thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura (TTP)
-Juvenile systemic scleroderma (jSSc)
-Nasal natural killer (NK)/T-cell lymphoma
-The thrombocytopenia and absent radii (TAR)
-Rothmund-Thomson syndrome
-congenital erythropoietic porphyria
-Adults Acute lymphoblastic leukaemia
-Adult B/L3-acute lymphoblastic leukemia
- Juvenile chronic myelomonocytic leukemia (JCMMoL)
-Basophilic leukemia
-Amyloidosis
-juvenile metachromatic leukodystrophy
-T-cell post-transplant lymphoproliferative disorder/lymphoma.
- Rare pediatric cancer- Neuroblastoma
-Juvenile myelomonocytic leukemia (JMML)
-Anaplastic large-cell lymphoma, T-/null-cell type (ALCL),
-malignant infantile osteopetrosis (MIOP),
-hypereosinophilic syndrome
-Polycythemia vera (PV)
-Nephrogenic fibrosing dermopathy
-lymphocytic bronchiolitis
-Adolescent-onset and adult-onset esthesioneuroblastoma
-Gaucher disease
-Mastocytosis
-sphingolipid activator proteins (SAPs)


While referring these diseases I am getting 2 questions, irresistibly:

1) Whether Bone marrow-derived cells (BMDCs) have any role in rare- diseases?

2) Whether the stem-cell niches may varies between diseases to disease or just follow the same niche / micro environment which is followed by the common cancer/ or normal cellular microenvironment? The questions came after reading number of stem-cell niches.

Thanks for your discussion.

rare diseases

In a bookshop I got an attention on an unusual topic in an unusual magazine, recently. The name of the magazine is called Forbes and topic is ‘How Novartis aims to reap billions of dollars in sales by focusing on big drug makers ignored rare diseases’.


'....When rheumatologist Timothy Wright joined Novartis (nyse: NVS - news - people ) in 2004 his first project was to rejuvenate an experimental arthritis drug. It was viewed lukewarmly in the lab because a similar drug from Amgen (nasdaq: AMGN - news - people ) had been a commercial flop.

Wright proposed testing the drug in patients with a disease so rare that some of his superiors had never heard of it: Muckle-Wells syndrome. At most a couple of thousand patients worldwide have the inherited disorder, which causes recurring fevers, rashes, joint pain and kidney damage. University researchers had just pinpointed a source: a bad gene that causes the body to produce an oversupply of interleukin-1, an immune system protein.....'


Please follow the link, for the complete article


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after the link has open, please select the first one which goes as follows:

Big Bucks - Forbes.com
For years big drugmakers ignored rare diseases. Now Novartis aims to reap billions of dollars in sales by focusing on them.members.forbes.com/forbes/2007/0521/060.html - 57k - Cached - Similar pages


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