OverView Of Breast Cancer

Breast cancer is a cancer that occurs in the tissues of the breast. It involves a group of abnormal cells which start to have abnormal growth patterns. It is an illness which is found largely in women, even though, approximately 1% of breast cancer occurs in men.
Breast cancer is the most widespread type of cancer that occurs in women and following lung cancer, it is the second foremost cause of cancer death in females. 184,200 new cases of breast cancer were reported in the year 2000 by the American Cancer Society, and this figure appears to be increasing on a yearly basis.
What are Breasts?
The breasts in women are an intricate piece of machinery which consist of glands, fat and connective fibrous tissue. They have several lobes, divided into lobules which end in the milk glands. There are tiny ducts which from the numerous tiny glands and after connecting together, end in the nipple.
Eighty percent of breast cancer cases occur in these ducts, and this condition is known as infiltrating ductal cancer. Cancer which develops in the lobules is known as lobular cancer and about 10-15% of breast cancers are this type of cancer. Other types of cancers are known as inflammatory breast cancer.
Metastatic Cancer
The most severe types of breast cancer are known as metastatic cancer. This type of cancer involves the spread of the cancer from the place where it began. It is most frequently metastasizes into the lymph nodes above the collarbone or under the arms on the same side of the cancer. This results in pain and swelling to the affected area as the lymphatic drainage system is then compromised. Other common sites of breast cancer metastasis include the brain, liver and the bones.
Breast Cancer Risk Factors for Women
Approximately 50% of women who develop breast cancer do not have any risk factors excluding age and their gender.
Age
Another critical factor is age. Although breast cancer can and does occur at any age, the risk of developing it increases as you get older. A normal woman aged 30 will usually have a 1 in 280 chance of developing breast cancer during the next ten years of her life. This then increases to a probable 1 in 70 chance of developing breast cancer when she reaches the age of 40 to 50 years.
Family History
The risk factor for breast cancer is also affected by family history.This risk is at its highest if a close relative has developed cancer of the breast at a young age. The risk increases further if the relative is close such as a mother, aunt or daughter. There has recently been found what is thought to be a cancer gene which can be passed down from mother to daughter.

A Powerful HIV inhibitor

In a significant step toward reducing the threat of HIV, UC Merced Professor Patricia LiWang has designed what may be the most effective chemical inhibitor against infection of the virus.
"We need a fairly wide arsenal of HIV drugs because the virus is always mutating," LiWang said. "Drugs become less effective as time goes on."
LiWang's inhibitor, a novel combination of two existing drugs, has a strength that ranges from several times better than existing inhibitors to several hundred times better, depending on the strain of HIV. The inhibitor works by blocking HIV from entering a person's cell at two different steps of viral entry. This so-called "entry inhibition" is at the forefront of new strategies for stopping the virus. Other existing inhibitors have different strategies, such as preventing HIV from carrying out activities like replicating or integrating into the human genome.
There are hundreds of different strains of HIV, LiWang said, and the virus mutates when it gets inside a person's body.
"However, since this drug is a combination of two inhibitors, it would be nearly impossible for a virus to mutate so it wouldn't get hit with either one of these drugs," she explained.
The research is an example of UC Merced's faculty addressing real-world health problems.
The inhibitor is a special protein produced from harmless bacteria, which allows for large amounts to be made. The inhibitor could be added to a vaginal cream that woman could apply to guard against the virus.While condoms protect against HIV, many men in sub-Saharan Africa and other areas won't wear them, and women often don't have a choice in the decision.
LiWang's findings were published in August in The Journal of Biological Chemistry. Graduate Student Bo Zhao was the first author on the paper. Marie K. Mankowski, Beth A. Snyder and Roger G. Ptakfrom the Southern Research Institute were also part of the study.
Though the discovery is promising, much more testing and development is needed before it could be used by people in countries ravaged by the AIDS epidemic. The next step would be to see if it causes inflammation or any side effects. Clinical trials would be years off.
"We hope that a company is interested in it and we hope to get funding to keep developing it and see why it works," LiWang said.

Source:MedicalNewsToday

One Drug, Many Targets: Is This The Future?

Potential molecular targets of the anti-HIV drug nelfinavir have been identified, and may explain why the drug is also effective as a cancer therapy. Findings will be published in the open-access journal PLoS Computational Biology on 28th April 2011.
Nelfinavir is a protease inhibitor that prevents replication of the HIV virus. It has also been found to have a positive effect on a number of solid tumor types but the mechanism of how the drug worked in humans was unclear. Researchers from the University of California San Diego and the City University of New York (CUNY) combined a wide array of computational techniques to investigate the molecular mechanisms underlying nelfinavir's observed anti-cancer effect and found that there are weak interactions with a multitude of molecular targets, rather than a strong interaction with a single target.
While drug molecules are designed to bind to targeted proteins in order to achieve a therapeutic effect, small drug molecules can also attach to off-target proteins with similar binding sites. The result may be unwanted side effects or, as in the case of nelfinavir, a secondary and positive effect. Philip E. Bourne, professor of pharmacology at UCSD Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, and his colleagues suggest that it is the collective effect of these weak interactions that leads to the clinical efficacy of nelfinavir.
The computational methods used by the researchers are a useful way of searching for potential drug targets: "Computer analysis allows us to search for other binding sites that match a particular drug-binding site - like looking for other locks that can be opened by the same key," said Lei Xie, associate professor at Hunter College, CUNY. However, it is a particularly complex route to validation of drug targets. Prof. Bourne adds "This is indeed challenging, but it is hard not to believe that this broad-based systems approach represents the future of drug discovery, at least as far as small-molecule drugs are concerned."
Funding: NIH, GM078596. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.


Source:Medicalnewstoday