Gene/Protein Disease Symptom Drug Enzyme Compound
Pivot Concepts:   Target Concepts:
Query: UMLS:C0684249 (lung carcinoma)
23,830 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

We investigated whether melatonin can affect tumor growth and/or hematopoiesis in mice transplanted with Lewis lung carcinoma and treated with cyclophosphamide or etoposide. These agents were injected i.p. for 5 days at two different cumulative doses (cyclophosphamide, 40 and 160 mg/kg body weight; etoposide, 20 and 40 mg/kg body weight) from day 8 through day 12 after tumor transplantation. Melatonin was injected s.c. at a dose of 1 mg/kg body weight/day, from day 8 throughout the experiments and from days 8 through 12 or from day 13 onwards. Melatonin did not influence tumor growth but selectively counteracted bone marrow toxicity when administered together with the cancer chemotherapy compounds without interfering with their anticancer action. In vitro, melatonin proved to counteract apoptosis in bone marrow cells incubated with etoposide. Such protection was reflected by an increased frequency of granulocyte/macrophage-colony forming units but not of the pluripotent spleen-colony forming units. The effect of melatonin was neutralized by anti-granulocyte/macrophage-colony-stimulating factor monoclonal antibodies. When athymic, T-cell-deficient mice were used as bone marrow donors, melatonin did not exert any protective effect. This suggested that melatonin is able to stimulate the endogenous production of granulocyte/macrophage-colony-stimulating factor via bone marrow T-cells. Due to the well known lack of toxic and undesirable side effects of melatonin, these findings might have a straightforward clinical application.
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PMID:Hematopoietic rescue via T-cell-dependent, endogenous granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor induced by the pineal neurohormone melatonin in tumor-bearing mice. 816 92

Melatonin exerts colony-stimulating activity and rescues myeloid progenitors from apoptosis, induced either in vivo or in vitro by cancer chemotherapy compounds in tumor-bearing mice. These effects are mediated mainly by T-helper cell-derived opioid cytokines with an apparent molecular mass of 15 kDa and 67 kDa that are recognized both by anti-interleukin-4 and anti-dynorphin B antibodies. These putative new cytokines were named melatonin-induced-opioid (MIO). The most active and naltrexone-sensitive MIO was the smaller molecule, which was called MIO15 and found to act on an opioid-binding site present in adherent bone marrow cells. However, the hematopoietic action of MIO15 was dependent on the presence of colony-stimulating factors (CSF). To investigate this point, we studied the ability of melatonin to rescue granulocyte/macrophage colony-forming units (GM-CFU) in the bone marrow of tumor-free animals treated with cancer chemotherapeutic compounds. We found that melatonin not only is unable to protect bone marrow GM-CFU unless the mice are transplanted with Lewis lung carcinoma (LLC), but also that melatonin seems to increase the myelotoxicity of cyclophosphamide in tumor-free mice. In both tumor-bearing or healthy mice, the effect of melatonin is negated by naltrexone, indicating the involvement of MIO15. Competition studies classified the target opioid-binding site as a kappa-opioid receptor with low affinity in tumor-free mice and high affinity in LLC-implanted mice. LLC is known to release CSF. Consistently, addition of CSF in the form of lung-conditioned medium (LCM) to adherent bone marrow cells increased the affinity of the kappa-opioid receptor. Addition of antigranulocyte/macrophage colony-stimulating factor (GM-CSF) mAbs neutralized the effect of LCM. In conclusion, the affinity state of the kappa-opioid receptors in stromal bone marrow cells seems to modulate the hematopoietic effect of melatonin and/or MIO15.
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PMID:kappa-Opioid receptors in marrow stroma mediate the hematopoietic effects of melatonin-induced opioid cytokines. 962 67

Melatonin (MEL) may counteract tumors through a direct oncostatic role. MEL is also an antistress agent with immunoenhancing properties against tumors due to a suppressive role of MEL on corticosterone release. Rotational stress (RS) (spatial disorientation) facilitates metastasis progression in mice. Also, MEL counteracts tumors because of its influence on immune responses via the metabolic zinc pool, which, is reduced in tumors and stress. Zinc is required for normal thymic endocrine activity (i.e. thymulin) and interleukin-2 (IL-2) production. Because in vivo data is still controversial, exogenous MEL treatment (22 days in drinking water) in both intact and pinealectomized (px) mice bearing Lewis lung carcinoma leads to significant decrements of metastasis volume, restoration of the negative crude zinc balance, recovery of thymulin activity and increment of IL-2 exclusively in intact and px tumor bearing mice subjected to RS. Significant inverse correlations are found in both stressed intact and px tumor bearing mice after MEL treatment between zinc and corticosterone (r = 0.78, P < 0.01; r = 0.80, P < 0.01, respectively). Positive correlations between zinc and IL-2 (r = 0.75, P < 0.01; r = 0.73, P < 0.01, respectively) or thymulin (r = 0.75, P < 0.01; r = 0.82, P < 0.01, respectively) are observed in same models of mice. These findings suggest a MEL action to decrease metastasis mediated by a possible interplay between zinc and MEL, via corticosterone, with consequent restoration of thymic efficiency and IL-2 production. MEL as an antistress agent with immunoenhancing properties in cancer deserves further consideration.nuclear factor-kb; POMC, proopiomelanocortin; Px, pinealectomized mice; RIA, radioimmunoassay; RS, rotational stress; SDI, stressed intact mice; SDPx, stressed pinealectomized mice; TNF-alpha, tumor necrosis factor-alpha; ZnFTS, active zinc-bound thymulin; ZnFTS + FTS, total thymulin.
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PMID:Melatonin administration in tumor-bearing mice (intact and pinealectomized) in relation to stress, zinc, thymulin and IL-2. 1041 Dec 80

Melatonin, synthesized in and released from the pineal gland, has been demonstrated by multiple in vivo and in vitro studies to have an oncostatic role in hormone-dependent tumors. Furthermore, several clinical trials point to melatonin as a promising adjuvant molecule to be considered for cancer treatment. In the past few years, evidence of a broader spectrum of action of melatonin as an antitumor agent has arisen; thus, melatonin appears to also have therapeutic effects in several types of hormone-independent cancer, including ovarian, leukemic, pancreatic, gastric and non-small cell lung carcinoma. In the present study, the latest findings regarding melatonin molecular actions when concomitantly administered with either radiotherapy or chemotherapy in cancer were reviewed, with a particular focus on hormone-dependent breast cancer. Finally, the present study discusses which direction should be followed in the next years to definitely clarify whether or not melatonin administration could protect against non-desirable effects (such as altered gene expression and post-translational protein modifications) caused by chemotherapy or radiotherapy treatments. As treatments move towards personalized medicine, comparative gene expression profiling with and without melatonin may be a powerful tool to better understand the antitumor effects of melatonin, the pineal gland hormone.
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PMID:What is known about melatonin, chemotherapy and altered gene expression in breast cancer. 2845 55