http://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on Health and Medicine. (Medical Xpress)—Very little has been known about the epigenetic events—developmental and environmental factors affecting genes—that occur prior to the invasive growth of head and neck squamous cell carcinomas and their spread to other parts of the body, or metastasis. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-05-trigger-neck-cancer-cells.html Cancer Wed, 08 May 2013 07:07:36 EST news287215646 Research on a soy-based treatment for colorectal cancer, a promising agent in ovarian cancer, and a new drug target for advanced prostate cancer was presented at the American Association for Cancer Research 2013 Annual Meeting. The meeting took place April 6-10, 2013 in Washington, DC. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-soy-based-compound-tumor-cell-proliferation.html Cancer Thu, 11 Apr 2013 17:00:46 EST news284918438 The intrauterine environment plays an important role in the health of the offspring. Now, experts from the University of Navarra affirm that the mother's stress, due to socio-economic or psycho-social causes, is associated with the development of pathologies related with obesity. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-relationship-prenatal-stress-obesity-rats.html Health Tue, 09 Apr 2013 12:01:35 EST news284727686 Researchers have generated preclinical data demonstrating that the protein KDM1, which functions as a lysine demethylase, is a potential target for glioma treatment, according to Gangadhara R. Sareddy, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow in the Vadlamudi Laboratory at The University of Texas Health Science Center in San Antonio, who presented the results at the AACR Annual Meeting 2013, held in Washington, D.C., April 6-10. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-04-kdm1-therapeutic-glioma.html Cancer Mon, 08 Apr 2013 09:00:01 EST news284629245 Pioneering studies by U. S. Department of Agriculture-funded research molecular geneticist Robert A. Waterland are helping explain how the foods that soon-to-be-moms eat in the days and weeks around the time of conception—or what's known as periconceptional nutrition–may affect the way genes function in her children, and her children's health. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-03-epigenetics-mechanism-effects-mom-nutrition.html Genetics Mon, 11 Mar 2013 16:54:29 EST news282239664 A study led by researchers at Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) has identified epigenetic mechanisms that connect a variety of diseases associated with inflammation. Utilizing molecular analyses of gene expression in macrophages, which are cells largely responsible for inflammation, researchers have shown that inhibiting a defined group of proteins could help decrease the inflammatory response associated with diseases such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, cancer and sepsis. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-03-mechanisms-inflammation-diabetes-cancer.html Immunology Fri, 01 Mar 2013 11:21:16 EST news281359263 The 18th century natural philosopher Jean-Baptiste Lamarck proposed that the necks of giraffes lengthened as a consequence of the cumulative effort, across generations, to reach leaves just out of their grasp. This view of evolution was largely abandoned with the advent of modern genetic theories to explain the transmission of most important traits and many medical illnesses across generations. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-02-life-insights-epigenetics.html Psychology & Psychiatry Thu, 14 Feb 2013 10:25:18 EST news280059911 Tumourigenesis is driven by genetic alterations and by changes in the epigenome, for instance by the addition of methyl groups to cytosine bases in the DNA. A deeper understanding of the interaction between the genetic and epigenetic mechanisms is critical for the selection of tumour biomarkers and for the future development of therapies. Human tumour specimens and cell lines however contain a plethora of genetic and epigenetic changes, which complicate data analysis. In contrast, certain mouse tumour models contain only a single genetic mutation and allow the analysis of nascent tumours. Scientists of the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics in Berlin have now discovered a recurring pattern of more than 13,000 epigenetic alterations in young tumours of the mouse. This genome-wide pattern was found to be partly conserved in human colon carcinoma, and may therefor facilitate the identification of novel clinical colon cancer biomarkers for early detection. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-02-colon-cancer-epigenetic-pattern-mice.html Genetics Thu, 07 Feb 2013 17:00:03 EST news279472308 One of the biggest challenges in psychiatric genetics has been to replicate findings across large studies. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-10-replicating-genes-bipolar-disorder.html Psychology & Psychiatry Mon, 15 Oct 2012 10:54:04 EST news269517237 New research into the cell-damaging effects of Huntington's disease suggests a potentially new approach for identifying possible therapeutic targets for treating the nerve-destroying disorder. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-06-cell-contents-key-toxicity-huntington.html Genetics Wed, 06 Jun 2012 10:50:42 EST news258198628 For the first time, scientists have tracked the activity, across the lifespan, of an environmentally responsive regulatory mechanism that turns genes on and off in the brain's executive hub. Among key findings of the study by National Institutes of Health scientists: genes implicated in schizophrenia and autism turn out to be members of a select club of genes in which regulatory activity peaks during an environmentally-sensitive critical period in development. The mechanism, called DNA methylation, abruptly switches from off to on within the human brain's prefrontal cortex during this pivotal transition from fetal to postnatal life. As methylation increases, gene expression slows down after birth. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-02-gene-brain-hub-tracked-lifespan.html Autism spectrum disorders Thu, 02 Feb 2012 12:00:12 EST news247402987 New research demonstrates that previous models used to examine cancer may not be complex enough to accurately mimic the true cancer environment. Using oral cancer cells in a three-dimensional model of lab-made tissue that mimics the lining of the oral cavity, the researchers found that the tissue surrounding cancer cells can epigenetically mediate, or temporarily trigger, the expression or suppression of a cell adhesion protein associated with the progression of cancer. These new findings support the notion that drugs that are currently being tested to treat many cancers need to be screened using more complex tissue-like systems, rather than by using conventional petri dish cultures that do not fully manifest features of many cancers. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-01-lab-made-tissue-slack-petri-dishes.html Cancer Wed, 11 Jan 2012 10:11:48 EST news245499079