At temperatures below 2.1 K, long-lived gaseous Rb atoms in glass cells have been generated with a simple method: irradiating the cells, containing 4He gas and Rb metal, with a cw laser. The obtained atomic Rb density ( approximately 10(8) cm(-3)) decreases with a 1/e time constant of about 10 s at 1.85 K. We have performed optical pumping of the Rb atoms and measured the longitudinal electroni...

To understand the alterations of Rb tumor suppressor gene and the relationship between defects in the Rb and p53 pathways in human esophageal carcinogenesis, we examined the loss of heterozygosity (LOH) of the Rb gene and immunohistochemical staining of pRb protein in 56 esophageal squamous cell carcinoma specimens and related the results to the p53 gene alterations. Using four introgenic polym...

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths, accounting for more deaths than breast, colon, and prostate cancer combined. The retinoblastoma (Rb)/p16 tumor suppressive pathway is deregulated in most cancers. Loss of p16 occurs more frequently than Rb loss, suggesting that p16 suppresses cancer by regulating Rb as well as the related proteins p107 and p130. However, direct evidence demonst...

Functional loss of the retinoblastoma (RB) gene has been implicated in the initiation or progression of several human tumor types including cancer of the eye, bone, bladder, and prostate. To examine the consequence of adding one RB allele containing its normal regulatory elements back into representative examples of each of these cancer types, as well as to compare the results to those previous...

Retinoblastoma (RB) is the most common type of malignant intraocular cancer in teenagers. One of the proteins abnormally expressed during oncogenesis of RB is sonic hedgehog (SHH), which possesses the capability to selectively activate transcription factors of different genes. However, the detailed function of SHH in RB remains unknown. Thus, the present study sought to investigate the role of ...

Intralesional (IL) therapy is under investigation to treat dermal and subcutaneous metastatic cancer. Rose Bengal (RB) is a staining agent that was originally used by ophthalmologists and in liver function studies. Previously, IL injection of RB induced regression of injected and uninjected tumors in murine models. However, the relevant mechanism is yet unknown. In this study, we used an OVA-ex...

Retinoblastoma (RB) is an intraocular cancer that affects young children. There is an ongoing effort to find new agents for RB management that are effective, specific and with few side-effects. In the present study, we tested artesunate (ART), a synthetic derivative from the herbal drug artemisinin, used in the clinic for the treatment of malaria. We analyzed ART cytotoxicity in an RB cell line...

The aryl hydrocarbon receptor (AHR) mediates the toxic effects of 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-p-dioxin (TCDD) and related compounds. In some mammalian cell lines, TCDD induces G1 cell cycle arrest, which depends on an interaction between the AHR and the retinoblastoma tumor suppressor (RB). Mammals possess one AHR, whereas fishes possess two or more AHR paralogs that differ in the domains import...

Several reports have indicated that the product of the retinoblastoma gene (Rb) complexes with the transcription factor E2F. We present evidence that the DNA-binding of the Rb-E2F complex involves another cellular factor. Addition of Rb to purified preparations of E2F does not generate an Rb-E2F complex that can bind DNA, and in fact, we see an inhibition of the DNA-binding ability of E2F. On t...

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play critical roles in retinoblastoma (RB) initiation and progression, aberrant expression of miR-145 had been frequently reported in cancer studies. However, the role and mechanism of its function in RB is still unclear. In this study, our data showed that miR-145 was downregulated in RB tissues and cell lines. Overexpression of miR-145 suppressed RB cell proliferation, migr...