Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
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Query: UMLS:C0029463 (osteosarcoma)
 16,637 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Fetal rat calvarial-derived osteoblasts in vitro (ROB) reinitiate a developmental program from growth to differentiation concomitant with production of a bone tissue-like organized extracellular matrix. To identify novel genes which may mediate this sequence, we isolated total RNA from three stages of the cellular differentiation process (proliferation, extracellular matrix maturation, and mineralization), for screening gene expression by the differential mRNA display technique. Of 15 differentially displayed bands that were analyzed by Northern blot analysis, one prominent 310 nucleotide band was confirmed to be proliferation-stage specific. Northern blot analysis showed a 600-650 nt transcript which was highly expressed in proliferating cells and decreased to trace levels after confluency and throughout the differentiation process. We have designated this transcript PROM-1 (for proliferating cell marker). A full length PROM-1 cDNA of 607 bp was obtained by 5' RACE. A short open reading frame encoded a putative 37 amino acid peptide with no significant similarity to known sequences. Expression of PROM-1 in the ROS 17/2.8 osteosarcoma cell line was several fold greater than in normal diploid cells and was not downregulated when ROS 17/2.8 cells reached confluency. The relationship of PROM-1 expression to cell growth was also observed in diploid fetal rat lung fibroblasts. Hydroxyurea treatment of proliferating osteoblasts blocked PROM-1 expression; however, its expression was not cell cycle regulated. Upregulation of PROM-1 in response to TGF-beta paralleled the stimulatory effects on growth as quantitated by histone gene expression. In conclusion, PROM-1 represents a small cytoplasmic polyA containing RNA whose expression is restricted to the exponential growth period of normal diploid cells; the gene appears to be deregulated in tumor derived cell lines.
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PMID:Detection of a proliferation specific gene during development of the osteoblast phenotype by mRNA differential display. 901 59

We previously demonstrated a correlation between wild-type p53 expression and appearance of osteoblastic-specific differentiation characteristics, as evidenced by basal osteocalcin gene expression in a mouse osteosarcoma tumor. The study reported here further explored the possibility of p53's having a distinct transcription-activating role in bone differentiation, in addition to its proposed role in G1 arrest and apoptosis. ROS17/2.3 osteoblastic osteosarcoma cells were stably transfected with a plasmid containing wild-type p53 binding sequences fused to the chloramphenicol acetyltransferase reporter gene. These cells were used to determine the transactivating role of p53 in regulation of osteocalcin gene expression. We chose two conditions under which osteocalcin expression is known to be upregulated: exposure of osteoblastic cells to differentiation-promoting medium and to vitamin D3. Exposure of the transfected cells to differentiation-promoting medium produced an increase in p53 transactivating activity correlating with the appearance of osteocalcin expression after about 1 wk. Vitamin D3 treatment resulted in upregulation of osteocalcin activity without a corresponding change in p53 transactivation activity or expression. In separate experiments, we tested whether changes in osteocalcin expression accompanied changes in p53 activity under conditions of downregulation of cell proliferation mediated by inhibition of DNA synthesis. Hydroxyurea treatment was used to inhibit DNA synthesis and produce growth arrest in osteoblastic cells. Inhibition of osteoblast cell proliferation was associated with a fourfold increase in p53 transactivating activity and a transient increase in osteocalcin steady-state expression. These results demonstrated a close relationship between p53 and osteocalcin and suggested a regulatory role for wild-type p53 in the control of basal osteocalcin gene expression in osteoblasts.
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PMID:p53 transactivity during in vitro osteoblast differentiation in a rat osteosarcoma cell line. 1036 15

The multisubstrate deoxyribonucleoside kinase of Drosophila melanogaster (Dm-dNK) can be expressed in human cells with retained enzymatic activity. The cells expressing Dm-dNK exhibit increased sensitivity to several cytotoxic nucleoside analogs. In this study, we further evaluated Dm-dNK as a potential novel suicide gene in combination with (E)-5-(2-bromovinyl)-2'-deoxyuridine (BVDU) as the prodrug. We used two human cancer cell lines transduced with a retrovirus encoding the Dm-dNK cDNA and investigated whether the cells expressing the enzyme can induce cell death of untransduced cells, a phenomenon known as the "bystander effect". A bystander effect was observed in a thymidine kinase-deficient human osteosarcoma cell line but not in the MIA PaCa-2 human pancreatic adenocarcinoma cell line. The cytotoxicity of BVDU increased in both cell lines when the compound was used in combination with subtoxic concentrations of hydroxyurea. Hydroxyurea also enhanced the bystander effect in the osteosarcoma cells, but not in the MIA PaCa-2 cells, treated with BVDU. These findings indicate that BVDU phosphorylated by Dm-dNK in transduced cancer cells may also induce bystander cell death in certain cell lines.
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PMID:Bystander effects of cancer cell lines transduced with the multisubstrate deoxyribonucleoside kinase of Drosophila melanogaster and synergistic enhancement by hydroxyurea. 1145 12