Warren symposium follows legacy of geneticist giant

If we want to understand how the brain creates memories, and how genetic disorders distort the brain’s machinery, then the fragile X gene is an ideal place to start. That’s why the Stephen T. Warren Memorial Symposium, taking place November 28-29 at Emory, will be a significant event for those interested in neuroscience and genetics. Stephen T. Warren, 1953-2021 Warren, the founding chair of Emory’s Department of Human Genetics, led an international team that discovered Read more

Mutations in V-ATPase proton pump implicated in epilepsy syndrome

Why and how disrupting V-ATPase function leads to epilepsy, researchers are just starting to figure Read more

Tracing the start of COVID-19 in GA

At a time when COVID-19 appears to be receding in much of Georgia, it’s worth revisiting the start of the pandemic in early 2020. Emory virologist Anne Piantadosi and colleagues have a paper in Viral Evolution on the earliest SARS-CoV-2 genetic sequences detected in Georgia. Analyzing relationships between those virus sequences and samples from other states and countries can give us an idea about where the first COVID-19 infections in Georgia came from. We can draw Read more
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Department of Neurosurgery

Without intent, yet malignant

Brain cancer doesn’t have a purpose or intent. It’s just a derangement of molecular biology, cells that keep growing when they’re not supposed to.

But it’s difficult not to think in terms of purpose or intent when looking at what cancers do.  For example, Winship Cancer Institute scientists Abdessamad (Samad) Zerrouqi, Beata Pyrzynska, Dan Brat and Erwin Van Meir have a recent paper in Cancer Research examining how glioblastoma cells regulate the process of blood clotting.*

Blood clots, often in the legs, are a frequent occurrence in patients fighting glioblastoma, the most common and the most aggressive form of brain cancer. Zerrouqi and http://www.gooakley.com/ Van Meir show that a tumor suppressor gene (p14ARF) that is often mutated in glioblastoma stops them from activating blood clotting. Take away the gene and glioblastoma cells activate the clotting process more.

At first glance, a puzzle emerges: why would a cancer “want” to induce blood clots? Cancer cells often send out growth factors that stimulate the growth of new blood vessels (angiogenesis). The cells are growing fast, thus they need their own blood supply. Activating clotting seems contradictory: why build a new highway and then induce a traffic jam?

Thrombosis-necrosis

The two left arrows indicate clots causing necrosis around the vessels. Cells at the edge of the necrotic zone (right arrow) tend to be more proliferative and invasive. Image courtesy of Zerrouqi.

In a way, tumor cells are acting somewhat Nietzschean, blindly managing their own cheap oakley evolution according to the principle “Whatever doesn’t kill me makes me stronger.”

Blood clots lead to both destruction of the healthy and tumor tissue and hypoxia, a shortage of oxygen that drives more aggressiveness in the tumor. The clots create “micro-necroses” at the leading edge of the tumor that over time probably fuse and create a big central necrosis.

“The paradox is that the tumor kills itself and the normal brain, yet the capacity of doing this is the hallmark of the most malignant form of this tumor,” Van Meir says.

“The advantage of tumoral thrombosis will be selection of cells to progress to higher aggressiveness: infiltrative,  resistant to death with conventional Oakley Sunglasses cheap therapies, metabolically adapted to low levels of oxygen and nutrients,” Zerrouqi says. “At this stage, the tumor seems to have a clear deadly intent.”

A fragment of one of the proteins that cancer cells use to exert the clotting effect, called TFPI2, could be used to antagonize blood clotting  therapeutically, they write in Cancer Research. The findings could also have implications for understanding the effects of current medications, such as the angiogenesis inhibitor bevacizumab, also known as Avastin.

*A paper by Van Meir and Dan Brat from 2005 is the top Google link under the search term “glioblastoma clotting.”

Posted on January 29, 2014 by Quinn Eastman in Cancer Leave a comment

Emory researchers receive grants to further work in pediatric brain tumor research

Dr. Castellino explains his research on medulloblastomas to participants attending the SBTF’s Grant Award Ceremony.

Two Emory researchers are being recognized by the Southeastern Brain Tumor Foundation (SBTF) for their work in pediatric brain tumor research.

Tracey-Ann Read, PhD, assistant professor in the Department of Neurosurgery, Emory University School of Medicine and director of the Pediatric Neuro-Oncology Laboratory at Emory was awarded a $75,000 grant for her work. She is studying the cell of origin that is responsible for the highly malignant pediatric brain tumor known as an Atypical Teratoid Rhabdoid Tumor (AT/RT). She is also developing a mouse model to study this very lethal brain cancer that occurs in early childhood.

Robert Craig Castellino, MD, assistant professor of pediatrics at Emory and pediatric hematologist/oncologist at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta at Egleston received $50,000 to support his research efforts. He is studying how the childhood brain cancer, known as medulloblastoma, can metastasize from the brain to other sites in the body, specifically the spine. Medulloblastoma is the most common pediatric malignant brain tumor.

SBTF board members and researchers who were awarded grants pose following the April ceremony.

Read and Castellino received the awards at the SBTF’s Grant Awards Ceremony in April at Emory University Hospital Midtown. Two other researchers from Duke University were also presented with grant money for their contributions in brain tumor research in adults.

Emory neurosurgeon Costas Hadjipanayis, MD, PhD, is the president of the Southeastern Brain Tumor Foundation. He says research, from young investigators such as these, is crucial in the race to find a cure for brain tumors. As federal research funding becomes even more difficult to obtain with cuts in funding, private foundation grants, such as from the SBTF, can permit researchers to start important research projects that can provide preliminary data for bigger grant proposals.

The SBTF awards $200,000-300,000 each year to major medical centers throughout the Southeast in support of cutting-edge brain and spinal tumor research.

 

Posted on May 26, 2011 by admin in Cancer Leave a comment
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