Search

Agents that interfere with tumoral immune tolerance may be useful to prevent or treat cancer. Brassinin is a phytoalexin, a class of natural products derived from plants that includes the widely known compound resveratrol. Brassinin has been demonstrated to have chemopreventive activity in preclinical models but the mechanisms underlying its anticancer properties are unknown. Here, we show that brassinin and a synthetic derivative 5-bromo-brassinin (5-Br-brassinin) are bioavailable inhibitors of indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO), a pro-toleragenic enzyme that drives immune escape in cancer. Like other known IDO inhibitors, both of these compounds combined with chemotherapy to elicit regression of autochthonous mammary gland tumors in MMTV-Neu mice. Furthermore, growth of highly aggressive melanoma isograft tumors was suppressed by single agent treatment with 5-Br-brassinin. This response to treatment was lost in athymic mice, indicating a requirement for active host T-cell immunity, and in IDO-null knockout mice, providing direct genetic evidence that IDO inhibition is essential to the antitumor mechanism of action of 5-Br-brassinin. The natural product brassinin thus provides the structural basis for a new class of compounds with in vivo anticancer activity that is mediated through the inhibition of IDO.Oncogene (2008) 27, 2851–2857; doi:10.1038/sj.onc.1210939; published online 19 November 2007 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the immunology of the maternal-fetal interface. Biology of pregnancy; Genetic polymorphism and tissue alloantigens of fetus; Information on fetal loss syndromes and immune dysregulation; Immunobiology of fetal survival and graft rejection.

Presents information on a study which reported a comparison of cash grain yields and profitability under different management systems. Materials and methods; Economic analysis of management methods; Results and discussion; Conclusion.

This paper deals with the development of a processing technique that will improve the signal-to-noise ratio at the single sensor for a received signal that is embodied in a partially correlated noise field. The approach of this study is unique in that the noise will be treated as being nonwhite and partially correlated. The concept of the proposed development is based on the time interval over which the temporal coherence or correlation properties of a noise field are defined. For narrow-band signals, the associated temporal coherence period is much longer than the correlation time interval of the anisotropic noise field. Thus a coherent integration of discontinuous segments of received signals will enhance the signal-to-noise ratio at the sensor by lowering the correlation properties of the associated nonwhite noise. Reconstruction by the proposed technique of the narrow-band signal time series with improved signal-to-noise ratio at the sensor will allow the use of the existing high resolution techniques to be utilized more effectively by lowering their threshold values in order to detect very weak signals. The intention here is to integrate the characteristics of the real anisotropic noise field during the preliminary processing stages of the array-sensor received signals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]