The artificial beta cell: control of the milieu interieur.
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Biomedical subjects
Publications and source records attributed to U Fischer.
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Particularly elder multimorbid patients suffering from a cerebrovascular insufficiency need a long term therapy. One condition for success, however, is the regular intake of drugs by the patient. Therefore the final goal is the increase of drug-compliance. This is based on the enhancement of the knowledge of the actual drug-compliance, the subject we wanted to learn more about by empirical investigations. During one year the drug-compliance of each patient of the Special Clinic Klausenbach was tested over a period of 20 days. The results were taken by checking riboflavin fluorometrically (method according to Gundert-Remy). In this way the patients could be classified as "takers" and "non-takers". The following variables wee considered: diagnoses, marital status, age, nationality, profession, IQ, mood, subjective evaluation of success of cure and medication. since according to a pre-study foreigners show a lower rate of compliance we restricted the sample to the 892 german cure patients, 343 of whom suffered from cerebrovascular diseases. Their compliance-level was almost 50%. The results of the subgroups hardly differed. The cure patients suffering from cerebrovascular insufficiencies did not show any striking compliance behaviour: the values are far below the ideal value, however. Further multivariate statistical analyses are designed to contribute to the development of effective measures of intervention.
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Hyperplastic lesions of the oropharyngeal mucosa such as leukoplakia and oral lichen planus can eventually develop into squamous cell carcinomas (SCC) and provide an excellent model for multistage carcinogenesis. The development of carcinomas is assumed to be the result of the interaction of genetic factors, locally applied carcinogens and immunological unresponsiveness. Recently a novel gene termed mdm2 has been isolated that is found to be involved in transcriptional regulation and can inhibit p53 function by forming a complex with p53. In this study the immunohistochemical detection of the MDM2 protein in 186 paraffin embedded tissue sections of normal mucosa, premalignant, malignant and metastatic lesions of the oropharyngeal mucosa is reported for the first time. p53 protein expression was also investigated in the same tissue samples. The increase in the number of p53 and MDM2 positive biopsies was correlated with the dysplasia grade and the loss of differentiation in the premalignant and malignant lesions. In late stages of the disease the number of biopsies that expressed both p53 and MDM2 increased. Inactivation of p53 function in head and neck carcinogenesis may also be due to MDM2 binding. Detection of MDM2 protein expression by immunohistochemistry may be an important diagnostic tool in the future.
Amplifications of cellular oncogenes and growth factor genes have previously been reported in gliomas. Here we have evaluated 21 gliomas for amplification of tumor related genes including NMYC, EGFR, TGFalpha, MET, CMYC, SRC, HRAS, NRAS, SEC, ROS1, JUN, and WNT1. Five amplifications were observed. The epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) gene was amplified in 4 glioblastomas. The oncogene MET was amplified in a glioblastoma which showed no EGFR gene amplification. Importantly, both genes are located on chromosome 7 and belong to a family with tyrosine kinase activity. There was no amplification found for TGFalpha which was previously reported to be amplified in gliomas. The finding of MET and EGFR independently amplified in glioma lends further support to a crucial role of chromosome 7 in the development of gliomas.
Tumor fragment spheroids (TFS) represent an organotypic in vitro model with preserved cytoarchitecture and matrix components of the native tumor in situ. In order to determine whether DNA amplifications within gliomas remain stable in spheroid culture, tumor fragment spheroids were established from 15 human gliomas including 14 glioblastoma and one anaplastic astrocytoma. Native tumor tissue, monolayers as well as TFS were evaluated for DNA amplification using reverse chromosome painting (RCP). A modified protocol for DNA isolation from TFS was established. Amplifications in the original tumor tissue were found on chromosomes 12q13-15, tel, 4q12-13 and 11p12-13, an amplification on 11p12-13 is reported for the first time. By RCP we could demonstrate that amplified domains on 12q13-15 and 4q12-13 in three tumors were maintained in TFS whereas the amplification on 11p12-13 could not be confirmed in TFS. In monolayer cultures, all amplifications which were detected in primary culture were lost until passage 5. The results of this first comparative study of DNA amplification in glioma by analyzing native tumor tissue and tumor fragment spheroids enables us to conclude that TFS seems to be a promising in vitro model for the study of DNA amplification under cell culture conditions.