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Biomedical subjects

L Breimer

Publications and source records attributed to L Breimer.

16 recordsLinked to original sources

Academia and industry - working together to fight cancer.

Academic centers and the pharmaceutical industry are working well together to improve the treatment of cancer. New agents are being tested in the clinic, including monoclonal antibodies with little toxicity. Academics help industry by identifying new targets for drugs and by developing the prospective databases to profile tumors and patients to identify those that will respond and engage in blue sky research. Academic centers must be cost and time-effective. Academics can help patients and industry by developing new and more appropriate end-points for assessing the new anticancer agents. The USA has been leading the way in that area with its accelerated approval and priority review systems and this, combined with the size of the USA market, will make it the predominant study area unless there are reforms in the EU.

Journal Article↗

EMBO fellows go home.

Explore the source record for details and available documents.

Academies and Institutes↗

Nuclear factor 1 activates the feline leukemia virus long terminal repeat but is posttranscriptionally down-regulated in leukemia cell lines.

A recombinant feline leukemia virus (FeLV) proviral clone (T17T-22) with a long terminal repeat (LTR) which differs from prototype FeLV by a point mutation within a conserved nuclear factor 1 (NF1)-binding motif in the LTR enhancer domain was found to be poorly expressed after DNA transfection. The NF1 point mutation reduced in vitro protein binding as assessed by gel shift analysis and reduced promoter activity significantly (2- to 10-fold). However, the degree of promoter impairment due to the NF1 site mutation varied according to cell type and was least severe in a feline leukemia cell line (T3) which had low levels of nuclear NF1 DNA-binding activity. Low NF1 DNA-binding activity was observed in three FeLV-induced leukemia cell lines (T3, T17, and FL74) and in murine F9 embryonal carcinoma cells. While similar levels of NF1 gene mRNA transcripts were detected in all cell lines, Western immunoblot analysis of F9, T17, and FL74 but not T3 nuclear extracts revealed very low levels of nuclear NF1 protein. These results indicate that NF1 activity is down-regulated in FeLV-induced leukemia cells by diverse posttranscriptional mechanisms. We suggest that NF1 down-regulation may be an important characteristic of target cells susceptible to FeLV transformation in vivo and may provide the selective pressure which favors duplication of the LTR core enhancer sequence in T-cell leukemogenic FeLV variants.

Animals↗

A DNA glycosylase from Escherichia coli that releases free urea from a polydeoxyribonucleotide containing fragments of base residues.

A poly (dA, [2-14C]dT) copolymer has been synthesized using terminal deoxynucleotidyltransferase. Treatment of the polydeoxyribonucleotide with potassium permanganate converts the thymine residues to urea and N-substituted urea derivatives, while the adenine residues are resistant to oxidation. This damaged polymer has been annealed with an equimolar amount of poly (dT) to generate a double-stranded polydeoxyribonucleotide containing scattered fragmented base residues, which are radioactively labeled selectively. On incubation of the latter with crude cell extracts from E. coli, free urea is released by a DNA glycosylase activity. The enzyme has been partly purified, and appears to be different from previously studied DNA glycosylase. It shows a strong preference for a double-stranded substrate, exhibits no cofactor requirement, and has a molecular weight of 20000 - 25000. Since fragmentation of pyrimidine residues is a major type of base lesion introduced in DNA by exposure to ionizing radiation, it seems likely this DNA glycosylase is active in repair of X-ray-induced lesions.

DNA↗