Showing posts with label androgen receptor. Show all posts
Showing posts with label androgen receptor. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 20, 2013

THE "WEAKNESS" OF MEN HAS GOT TO BE IN THEIR ANDROGEN

One thing is certain, women seem to live longer than men...There seem to be many more widows than widowers!  If you look at statistics of elderly who live the longest, you are more likely to find women than men.  It is easy to say that men live a more stressful life and therefore die sooner, but one may also want to look into the main difference between men and women.  And the Androgen level comes quickly to mind!
Androgen and related receptors are part of "wild genes", that is their effect here involves many genes downstream.
When you look at the span of genes which interact with the Androgen gene, one is struck by the deep epigenetic distribution of their effects!
One particular interacting gene stands out:

"NCOA4 has been shown to interact with Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor gamma[4] and Androgen receptor.[ "(wikipedia)

The involvement of the PPAR gamma point to weakness of Antigen presentation and therefore a weakness in our defense mechanism.  This perhaps opens the door to understanding why men having sex with men still have the highest Kaposi Sarcoma burden?  I believe we are onto something here! look this up! NCOA4, a new target indeed!

Friday, April 19, 2013

Melanoma Antigen Gene Protein MAGE-11 Regulates Androgen Receptor

*T-cell therapy, that is genetically engineered T-cells, is a valid modality of cancer treatment.  Porter et al updated their finding at the ASH describing response rate in refractory CLL and ALL.  Patients were given a lentiviral vector that expressed a chimeric antigen receptor "with specificity for the B cell Antigen CD19 paired with CD137 and CD3-zeta." (hemonc today) some of the reported results where positively dramatic.
The experience with MAGE 11 for treatment refractory melanoma did not go so well.

Melanoma Antigen Gene Protein MAGE-11 Regulates Androgen Receptor 

What you pick to attack should not be in the brain (attack to the brain by T cell is likely), and involving a "crazy gene" the like of Androgen Receptor will have many unexpected consequences.  patient died with coma and seizures!   T-cell tissue penetration is bound to occur because it is what T cell do so your task is to pick the receptor carefully!

and don't go out there and pick p300, a potent and ubiquitous transcriptional regulator, because it is Ubiquitous!  Tissue specificity as done above in Hematologic malignancies would be more appropriate!
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NOW A BIT OF GOOD NEWS

Infusion of Autologous dendritic cell Immunotherapy  (AGS-003) given with SUNITINIB extended survival in Metastatic Renal cell cancer!   Think Immunotherapy when the going get tough we told recently... congrats to NC researcher to have proven the point!   Follow this principle in tough Myeloma cases.  May be drendritic cell infusion will work in Myeloma!