Métodos de coleta de material para diagnóstico de doenças de peixes

CURSOS PROVET 2011

Métodos de coleta de material para diagnóstico de doenças de peixes Coordenação: Dra. Agar Costa Alexandrino de Pérez Data: 01 a 03 de Abril de 2011 Carga horária: 16h Objetivo: Apresentar ao médico veterinário as técnicas de coleta de material para diagnóstico de doenças de peixes Investimento: Médicos Veterinários: R$450,00 Graduandos: R$390,00 Docentes: Dra. Agar Costa Alexandrino de Pérez, Dra. Mariana Vaz Rodriguez, Dra. Silvia Napoleão, Dr. Roberto Ishikawa e Dr. Augusto Pérez Montano Programação Sexta-feira 01.04.2011  18:00h às 20:00h - Elementos de anatomia, fisiologia e semiologia 20:00h às 20:15h - Coffee break 20:15h às 22:00h - Principais doenças em peixes Sábado 02.04.2011  08:00h às 10:00h - Contenção e eutanásia 10:00h às 10:15h - Coffee break 10:15h às 12:00h - Técnica de necropsia e coleta de material para exame parasitológico 12:00h às 13:00h - Almoço 13:00h às 15:00h - Coleta de material para exame hematológico e microbiológico 15:00h às 15:15h - Coffee break 15:15h às 17:00h - Coleta de material para exame histopatológico e biópsia Domingo 03.04.2011 Programação Prática: 08:00h às 10:00h - Anatomia e coleta de amostras para os diferentes exames 10:00h às 10:15h - Coffee break 10:15h às 12:00h - Anatomia e coleta de amostras para os diferentes exames Inscrições Para efetuar sua inscrição Clique Aqui! Contato: Talita Miyamura 55 11 3579-1431 55 11 7865-1175 ID Nextel: 82*22891 e-mail: cursos@provet.com.br

Pesquisa encontra vírus HPV em 50% dos homens

A metade dos homens saudáveis está infectada com HPV, indica um dos maiores estudos já feitos sobre a incidência da doença no sexo masculino. Os resultados são publicados nesta terça-feira no "Lancet".

O HPV (papiloma vírus humano) é transmitido por relações sexuais na maioria das vezes, e pode causar lesões na pele e nas mucosas.

A pesquisa acompanhou por quatro anos 4.074 homens de 18 a 70 anos do Brasil, dos EUA e do México.

Eles tiveram amostras recolhidas do pênis e do escroto submetidas a análise. Dos 50% com HPV, 30% tinham o vírus que pode levar a câncer, 38% tinham o não cancerígeno, e o restante tinha mais de um tipo de HPV.

Há mais de cem tipos de HPV, mas a maioria é inofensiva e assintomática.

As altas taxas de contaminação nos homens, superiores às das mulheres, surpreendem. Na população feminina, mais associada ao HPV, a taxa média de contaminação é de 14%, compara a pesquisadora Luisa Villa, do Instituto Ludwig, responsável pelo estudo no Brasil.

"Antes, acreditava-se que os homens tinham menos HPV, que as infecções ocorriam em menor proporção. Mas eles também têm infecções, e em taxas mais elevadas do que as mulheres."

Apenas recentemente é que começou a se estudar sobre o HPV no homem. Um dos motivos para isso é que, nas mulheres, as consequências das contaminações são mais graves, como o câncer de colo de útero -segundo tumor mais frequente, depois do de câncer de mama.

"Os homens foram deixados de lado. São o vetor do vírus, mas as mulheres têm mais doenças por causa dele", diz Glauco Baiocchi Neto, diretor de ginecologia oncológica do A.C. Camargo.

O risco aumenta com o número elevado de parceiras e com a prática de sexo anal.

As chances de ter HPV que pode evoluir para um câncer aumentaram 2,4 vezes em homens que tinham tido mais de 50 parceiras, e 2,6 vezes em homens com pelo menos três parceiros.

Clique na imagem para visualizar

MAIS IMUNIDADE

Outra novidade da pesquisa é que, entre os homens, o risco de adquirir o vírus é constante, dos 18 a 70 anos. Entre as mulheres, o risco é maior até os 25 anos e tende a diminuir com o tempo.

Segundo o estudo, ainda não se sabe o porquê dessa diferença, mas há hipóteses.

Uma é que o número de parceiras sexuais do homem é constante por toda a vida, o que faz com que aumente sua exposição. Por outro lado, essa maior exposição poderia criar uma resposta imune que os protege de outras infecções subsequentes.

PREVENÇÃO

O estudo frisa a importância da vacinação contra HPV em homens de todas as idades, como prevenção.

Estudo recente publicado no "New England" e feito em mais de 18 países, incluindo o Brasil, mostrou que a vacina contra o HPV pode ser eficaz também em homens.

Mas sua aplicação em homens só foi aprovada em alguns países, como EUA, Panamá, Equador e Austrália.

O Brasil usa dois tipos de vacina contra o HPV, só em mulheres. São encontradas em clínicas particulares e indicadas a meninas e mulheres entre nove e 26 anos, mas não excluem a necessidade do Papanicolaou para prevenção do câncer.

Camisinha reduz o risco, mas, diz o urologista Alvaro Sarkis, não protege 100%.

Para Jorge Hallak, professor de urologia da USP, a melhor prevenção é a circuncisão, que diminui em mais de 70% as chances de contágio.

Uma em cada 1.900 pessoas atende critérios de saúde cardiovascular

Saúde do coração

Apenas uma em cada 1.900 pessoas se encaixa dentro daquilo que a renomada Sociedade Americana do Coração (AHA) define como saúde cardiovascular ideal.

A conclusão é de um estudo feito por médicos da Universidade de Pittsburgh, publicado na revista especializada Circulation.

A chamada "saúde cardiovascular ideal" resulta da combinação de sete fatores:

1. não fumar;
2. índice de massa corporal inferior a 25;
3. atividades físicas regulares;
4. dieta saudável;
5. colesterol abaixo de 200 sem tratamento;
6. pressão arterial abaixo de 12 por 8;
7. glicose em jejum abaixo de 100.

"De todas as pessoas que foram avaliadas, apenas uma em 1.900 poderia afirmar ter saúde cardíaca ideal," diz o Dr. Steven Reis, coordenador do estudo.

Raridade

Os médicos avaliaram 1.933 pessoas, com idades entre 45 e 75 anos, realizando entrevistas, checagens físicas e exames de sangue.

Eles encontraram um único cidadão que atendia a todos os requisitos - equivalente a 0,1 por cento.

Menos de 10 por cento preenchiam cinco ou mais critérios, 2 por cento preenchiam quatro comportamentos saudáveis para o coração e 1,4 por cento preenchiam três.

Após o ajuste para idade, sexo e nível de renda, os dados mostram que os negros têm 82 por cento menos chances de atender cinco ou mais critérios do que os brancos.

"Isso nos diz que a prevalência atual da saúde do coração é extremamente baixa, e que temos um grande desafio pela frente para atingir o objetivo da AHA de uma melhoria de 20 por cento nas taxas de saúde cardiovascular em 2020," afirma o médico.

Cientistas encontram mais de 4.000 componentes no sangue humano

A lista de compostos conhecidos no sangue humano literalmente explodiu, passando de apenas um punhado para mais de 4.000.

Do que é feito o sangue

Pergunte a qualquer vestibulando sobre o que compõe o sangue e você ouvirá uma lista certamente contendo glóbulos brancos, glóbulos vermelhos, plaquetas e plasma.

Alguns se esquecerão de um ou outro desses componentes, mas dificilmente você encontrará alguém que lhe falará de um componente que não esteja entre esses quatro.

Contudo, após três anos de uma análise exaustiva, feita por mais de 20 cientistas de seis instituições do Canadá, a lista de compostos conhecidos no sangue humano literalmente explodiu, passando de apenas um punhado para mais de 4.000.

Composição do sangue

"Hoje, um médico que esteja analisando o sangue de um paciente enfermo procura por algo entre 10 a 20 compostos químicos," explica David Wishart, da Universidade de Alberta.

"Agora nós identificamos 4.229 substâncias químicas no sangue que os médicos podem potencialmente olhar para diagnosticar e tratar problemas de saúde," conta o biomédico.

Os compostos químicos do sangue, ou metabólitos, são rotineiramente analisados pelos médicos para diagnosticar doenças como diabetes e insuficiência renal. O estudo e a identificação dos metabólitos é chamado metabolômica.

Wishart afirma que a nova pesquisa abre a possibilidade de diagnosticar centenas de outras doenças que são caracterizadas por um desequilíbrio na química do sangue.

"Esta é a mais completa caracterização química do sangue já feita," afirma o pesquisador. "Nós sabemos agora os valores normais de todos os compostos químicos detectáveis no sangue. Os médicos poderão usar estas medições como um ponto de referência para o acompanhamento da saúde atual, e até mesmo futura, de um paciente."

Química do sangue

Ele afirma que as substâncias químicas no sangue são o "canário na mina de carvão", por captarem os primeiros sinais de um problema médico que se aproxima: "A química do sangue é a primeira coisa a mudar quando uma pessoa está desenvolvendo uma situação perigosa, como o colesterol alto."

A base de dados criada por Wishart e sua equipe é de livre acesso, ou seja, qualquer um pode entrar e encontrar a lista expandida de produtos químicos no sangue.

"Com esse novo banco de dados, os médicos podem agora associar uma anomalia específica em centenas de compostos químicos diferentes, com o problema específico de um paciente," disse Wishart.

A base de dados dos compostos do sangue pode ser acessada no endereço www.serummetabolome.ca.

A pesquisa foi publicada na revista científica Plos One.

Genetic Switch Increases Muscle Blood Supply

ScienceDaily (Mar. 1, 2011) — Many people suffer from a devastating condition known as critical limb ischemia (CLI) that can lead to muscle wasting and even amputation. The disease is linked to the blockage of blood flow to the skeletal muscle and current treatment options include rehabilitative exercise and surgical bypass of blood vessels. New preclinical research suggests there may be a way to restore blood supply in skeletal muscle without traditional intervention.

Genetic enhancement of skeletal muscle blood supply: Turning on a gene switch known as estrogen-related receptor gamma converts fast twitch muscle fibers into slow twitch fibers with a dense supply of blood vessels. The composite image shows blood vessels in green and muscle fibers in red. 

Scientists at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth) and the Salk Institute for Biological Studies announced in the March 2 print issue of the journal Cell Metabolism that they have identified a genetic switch that can increase the number of blood vessels in the skeletal muscle of non-exercising mice.

Skeletal muscle is composed of two types of fibers: slow twitch fibers that inherently have a dense supply of blood vessels and fast twitch fibers that have fewer blood vessels. The researchers used a gene switch known as estrogen-related receptor gamma (ERR gamma) that when activated in fast twitch fibers of mice by genetic engineering, converts these fibers into slow twitch fibers.

"This consequently resulted in a striking increase in muscle blood supply as measured by imaging and angiography," said Vihang Narkar, Ph.D., lead investigator and assistant professor of molecular medicine at the UTHealth Medical School. "These genetically-transformed muscles also acquire other characteristics of slow muscles, such as improved metabolic capacity and fatigue resistance that can be additionally beneficial in resolving muscle vascular disease."

Narkar, whose UTHealth laboratory is in the Center for Diabetes and Obesity Research at the Brown Foundation Institute of Molecular Medicine for the Prevention of Human Diseases, said, "The identification of the estrogen-related receptor gamma vascular switch will open potential therapeutic avenues for treating CLI and other cardiovascular diseases linked to defective blood supply."

Colin Barker, M.D., assistant professor of cardiology at the UTHealth Medical School, said new research is needed to help people with peripheral artery disease, particularly those with the most severe form -- critical limb ischemia. "Poor circulation in the legs can lead to muscle wasting, infections, severe pain and amputation," he said. "Dr. Narkar's work potentially has many useful applications. It is very much in the translational medicine arena."

"Understanding the gene network that specifies high vascular supply to muscle gives us a new and very powerful tool to promote improved muscle performance and the promise of fitness, especially for those who cannot work out," says Ronald M. Evans, Ph.D., senior author, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator and professor in the Salk's Institute's Gene Expression Laboratory. "This is good news for people with heart disease, frailty, peripheral vascular disease and more generally those who have a variety of medical problems where exercise could be helpful but is not possible to achieve."

In 2010, an estimated 2.8 to 3.5 million U.S. citizens suffered from critical limb ischemia, according to a report by THE SAGE GROUP, an independent research and consulting company specializing in peripheral artery disease. CLI risk factors include diabetes, obesity and smoking.

"Exercise is an important part of any intervention strategy to prevent or treat diabetes mellitus and obesity," said Perry Bickel, M.D., associate professor of medicine at the UTHealth Medical School and director of the UTHealth Center for Diabetes and Obesity Research. "Results by Drs. Narkar and Evans support the notion that in the future we may be able to design drugs that produce the benefits of exercise in order to counteract the damage that diabetes and obesity cause to the body, such as blockages of blood vessels."

Narkar and Evans collaborated on a highly-publicized study published in the journal Cell in 2008 in which they used two investigational exercise mimetic drugs -- GW1516 and AICAR -- to increase the endurance of non-exercising mice. These drugs target different genetic switches, namely PPAR delta and AMPK.

Discovery of Source of Glycogen 'Manufacturing' Errors Sheds Light on Fatal Disease

ScienceDaily (Mar. 1, 2011) — Indiana University scientists have solved a perplexing mystery regarding one of the body's main energy storage molecules, in the process shedding light on a possible route to treatment of a rare but deadly disease in teenagers.

Electron microscopy images demonstrate how glycogen molecules (left) become structurally abnormal (right) when excessive levels of phosphate are attached due to a mutation in the lafora gene.

The disease occurs when a genetic mutation causes excessive amounts of phosphate to build up in glycogen. Glycogen is a chain-like molecule the body uses to temporarily store glucose when it's not needed to provide energy for cellular activities. The excess phosphate causes unnatural glycogen structures to appear in the body, including the brain, resulting in progressive neurological problems.

In a paper in the March 2, 2011 issue of the journal Cell Metabolism, a research team led by Peter J. Roach, Ph.D., professor of biochemistry and molecular biology at the IU School of Medicine, has identified where the extra phosphate comes from, and how it is chemically linked to the glycogen molecules. The findings, Dr. Roach said, suggest a possibility for treating the disease -- stopping the body from producing glycogen.

Lafora disease, named after the Spanish physician who identified it, strikes early in the teen years with epileptic seizures and then other neurological symptoms that grow progressively worse. It is always fatal, usually within 10 years.

"It's a very harrowing disease and there's no treatment right now. It's thankfully rare, but for the families affected it's tragic," said Dr. Roach, Distinguished Professor and a Chancellor's Professor, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis.

The disease is caused by a mutation to one of two genes, one leading to a defective version of a protein called laforin. In previous research, Dr. Roach and his collaborators showed that laforin's role is to remove phosphate residues from glycogen. When the body cannot produce laforin, the phosphate levels in glycogen build up, resulting in Lafora disease.

What had puzzled scientists was the source of the phosphate. The answer, Dr. Roach and his colleagues report in Cell Metabolism, is found in the enzyme that cells normally use to build up the glycogen molecules. When there are extra glucose molecules in the body, such as after a meal, the enzyme, like a tiny molecular machine, hooks the glucose molecules onto the glycogen chain. In the process, phosphates that are attached to the glucose are discarded.

But once every 10,000 cycles or so, a phosphate molecule remains attached when the enzyme hooks the glucose molecule onto the glycogen chain. The job of laforin is to correct for those errors. Without the laforin, phosphates build up and the deadly disease is the result.

Dr. Roach and his colleagues note that animal experiments suggest that a treatment to counteract the laforin mutation could be compounds that would block the production of glycogen. Although a lack of glycogen could have side effects -- such as greater propensity to develop diabetes -- they might be acceptable in the face of such a deadly alternative, Dr. Roach said. However, such an approach is only a theoretical possibility at his point, he said.

The lead author for the Cell Metabolism paper was Vincent S. Tagliabracci, Ph.D., now at the University of California San Diego. Other collaborators included researchers at the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center at the University of Georgia.

Funding for the research was provided by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the American Heart Association.

Parts of Brain Can Switch Functions: In People Born Blind, Brain Regions That Usually Process Vision Can Tackle Language

ScienceDaily (Mar. 1, 2011) — When your brain encounters sensory stimuli, such as the scent of your morning coffee or the sound of a honking car, that input gets shuttled to the appropriate brain region for analysis. The coffee aroma goes to the olfactory cortex, while sounds are processed in the auditory cortex.

MRI scan of brain.

That division of labor suggests that the brain's structure follows a predetermined, genetic blueprint. However, evidence is mounting that brain regions can take over functions they were not genetically destined to perform. In a landmark 1996 study of people blinded early in life, neuroscientists showed that the visual cortex could participate in a nonvisual function -- reading Braille.

Now, a study from MIT neuroscientists shows that in individuals born blind, parts of the visual cortex are recruited for language processing. The finding suggests that the visual cortex can dramatically change its function -- from visual processing to language -- and it also appears to overturn the idea that language processing can only occur in highly specialized brain regions that are genetically programmed for language tasks.

"Your brain is not a prepackaged kind of thing. It doesn't develop along a fixed trajectory, rather, it's a self-building toolkit. The building process is profoundly influenced by the experiences you have during your development," says Marina Bedny, an MIT postdoctoral associate in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences and lead author of the study, which appears in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of Feb. 28.

Flexible connections

For more than a century, neuroscientists have known that two specialized brain regions -- called Broca's area and Wernicke's area -- are necessary to produce and understand language, respectively. Those areas are thought to have intrinsic properties, such as specific internal arrangement of cells and connectivity with other brain regions, which make them uniquely suited to process language.

Other functions -- including vision and hearing -- also have distinct processing centers in the sensory cortices. However, there appears to be some flexibility in assigning brain functions. Previous studies in animals (in the laboratory of Mriganka Sur, MIT professor of brain and cognitive sciences) have shown that sensory brain regions can process information from a different sense if input is rewired to them surgically early in life. For example, connecting the eyes to the auditory cortex can provoke that brain region to process images instead of sounds.

Until now, no such evidence existed for flexibility in language processing. Previous studies of congenitally blind people had shown some activity in the left visual cortex of blind subjects during some verbal tasks, such as reading Braille, but no one had shown that this might indicate full-fledged language processing.

Bedny and her colleagues, including senior author Rebecca Saxe, assistant professor of brain and cognitive sciences, and Alvaro Pascual-Leone, professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School, set out to investigate whether visual brain regions in blind people might be involved in more complex language tasks, such as processing sentence structure and analyzing word meanings.

To do that, the researchers scanned blind subjects (using functional magnetic resonance imaging) as they performed a sentence comprehension task. The researchers hypothesized that if the visual cortex was involved in language processing, those brain areas should show the same sensitivity to linguistic information as classic language areas such as Broca's and Wernicke's areas.

They found that was indeed the case -- visual brain regions were sensitive to sentence structure and word meanings in the same way as classic language regions, Bedny says. "The idea that these brain regions could go from vision to language is just crazy," she says. "It suggests that the intrinsic function of a brain area is constrained only loosely, and that experience can have really a big impact on the function of a piece of brain tissue."

Bedny notes that the research does not refute the idea that the human brain needs Broca's and Wernicke's areas for language. "We haven't shown that every possible part of language can be supported by this part of the brain [the visual cortex]. It just suggests that a part of the brain can participate in language processing without having evolved to do so," she says.

Redistribution

One unanswered question is why the visual cortex would be recruited for language processing, when the language processing areas of blind people already function normally. According to Bedny, it may be the result of a natural redistribution of tasks during brain development.

"As these brain functions are getting parceled out, the visual cortex isn't getting its typical function, which is to do vision. And so it enters this competitive game of who's going to do what. The whole developmental dynamic has changed," she says.

This study, combined with other studies of blind people, suggest that different parts of the visual cortex get divvied up for different functions during development, Bedny says. A subset of (left-brain) visual areas appears to be involved in language, including the left primary visual cortex.

It's possible that this redistribution gives blind people an advantage in language processing. The researchers are planning follow-up work in which they will study whether blind people perform better than sighted people in complex language tasks such as parsing complicated sentences or performing language tests while being distracted.

The researchers are also working to pinpoint more precisely the visual cortex's role in language processing, and they are studying blind children to figure out when during development the visual cortex starts processing language.

New Personalized Therapy Causes Cancer Cells to Kill Themselves

ScienceDaily (Mar. 1, 2011) — A Wayne State University School of Medicine physician-researcher has developed a personalized therapy to treat a wide range of cancers. The treatment is based on a naturally occurring human enzyme that has been genetically modified to fool cancer cells into killing themselves.

The unique concept, patented by Wayne State University, was successfully demonstrated on melanoma cells that are resistant to routine treatments such as chemotherapy or radiotherapy. Melanoma is a perfect model for testing this new therapy because it is considered the most aggressive form of human cancer due to its many defense mechanisms against available treatments. The success of the therapy in killing melanoma suggests a similar outcome in treating other cancers.

Developed by Karli Rosner, M.D., Ph.D., assistant professor and director of Research in the Department of Dermatology, the method uses genetic constructs that contain a genetically modified enzyme -- DNase1 protein -- to seek out and destroy cancer cells. The novel technology was published in the article "Engineering a waste management enzyme to overcome cancer resistance to apoptosis: adding DNase1 to the anti-cancer toolbox" in the Jan. 14 online edition of Cancer Gene Therapy, a Nature Publishing Group journal.

Dr. Rosner modified the genetic code for DNase1, a highly potent DNA-degrading enzyme, and altered its genetic composition by deleting a part of the code, mutating another part and adding an artificial piece of code. Through these changes, the altered DNA program is translated into a modified protein. In contrast to the natural protein, the modified protein will not be eliminated from the cancer cell, will resist deactivation by cell inhibitors and will gain access to the cell's nucleus. "If you imagine the cell's nucleus as a computer and DNA in the nucleus as computer software," Dr. Rosner explained, "then the altered, hacked DNA program corresponds to a computer virus."

"To further understand this anti-cancer technology," he continued, "recollect the plot from the movie, Independence Day. In this movie, a computer virus is introduced into an alien ship to neutralize its defenses and make it vulnerable to external weapons. We do something similar but much better by introducing the altered genetic code of DNase1 into the DNA of cancer cells alien to the healthy body." The cancer cell, unaware of the destructive potential of the modified code, translates it into a protein that evades the cell's defense mechanisms and enters the nucleus. In the nucleus, the protein damages DNA by chopping it into fragments without the need for external weaponry, i.e., other medications. Following damage to DNA, the cell's organelles disintegrate and the cancer cell dies. In this way, Dr. Rosner's technology leads cancer cells into committing suicide because he fools them into generating the protein that will cause their own death.

The beauty of this therapy is that specifically-targeted cancer cells destroy themselves through the physiological mechanism of apoptosis, leaving surrounding healthy cells intact. This mode of cancer cell elimination leaves no residual debris to alert the immune system to kick in, essentially committing "the perfect crime," Dr. Rosner said. This is important because the many side effects of current anti-cancer treatments are attributed to activation of the immune system. The fact that this therapy does not require participation of the patient's immune system to kill cancer cells is a big advantage over other newly developed technologies, such as the cancer vaccine. Those technologies depend on the patient's immune system to destroy cancer. Unfortunately, they are not effective in the presence of a compromised immune system, which is true for many cancer patients. In contrast, Dr. Rosner's therapy will be able to treat even the most severely immuno-compromised patients with the same degree of success as in treating patients with a fully functional immune system.

Patients with the same cancer type vary in their response to identical treatment because the biological characteristics of the same cancer type usually differ between patients. As a result, the medical field strives to develop treatments that can be adjusted to each patient. The structure of Dr. Rosner's technology is flexible in that it contains Lego-like pieces that together form a genetic construct. Each piece can be replaced by one of several other genetic pieces that perform the same task, but differ slightly in their genetics. The multiple options available for each genetic piece will allow the physician to tailor the finalized treatment to each patient based on the unique characteristics of his or her cancer. In this way, the new technology is a "true personalized therapy" he said. The physician will expose a patient's cancer cells obtained by biopsy, to various genetic constructs to identify the version of therapy that kills the patient's cancer with the utmost efficiency.

Of particular importance is the potential for this technology to treat a large variety of tumors, such as prostate, lung and breast cancers. Dr. Rosner likened the therapy to the military's Tomahawk missile platform. The Tomahawk is directed to its target by programming the missile's homing device. Likewise, the destructive genetic construct can be targeted to a particular cancer type by incorporating a genetic piece that specifically identifies the cancer. Multiple genetic homing devices will be at the physician's disposal. The ability to target the therapy specifically to cancer cells will reduce side effects common with today's anti-cancer therapies. Moreover, the ability to target multiple cancers will immensely increase the number of cancer patients who will benefit from the new technology.

The one side effect that Dr. Rosner foresees is the potential for lightening of skin hue at a level that he cannot predict, but that's a tradeoff someone suffering from metastatic cancer and given a limited prognosis may accept in exchange for becoming cancer-free. To date, Dr. Rosner has demonstrated cancer cell kill rates of 70 to 100 percent with his first generation of "gene suicide therapy." To further increase the killing efficiency, he has recently designed a second generation of constructs. In the near future he intends to test the therapy in an animal model, an intermediate step required before moving the treatment into clinical trial.

"Although this has been tested on melanoma cell lines, Dr. Rosner's approach can be tailored to other types of tumors," said Darius Mehregan, M.D., the Hermann Pinkus Chair of the Department of Dermatology. "I think it is important for other researchers in the Wayne State University system to be aware of possibilities to collaborate, and for the pharmaceutical industry to be aware of the economic potential of this novel technology."