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Okanagan College Media Release
Castanet.net
... in the College's biology lab, featuring shells, coral and other marine life from exotic locations including off the coast of Thursday Island (Arafura Sea), Ningaloo Reef, West Australia (Indian Ocean), Broome, West Australia (Indian Ocean), Flores ...

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This Week In Black History
New Pittsburgh Courier
1942—The 93rd Infantry is activated and assigned to combat in the Pacific. It thus became the first African-American division ... After her death from cancer in 1965, another one of her plays—“To Be Young, Gifted and Black” became a major off ...

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CNW Daybook for Wednesday, May 15, 2013
Wall Street Journal (press release)
URL: http://www.newswire.ca/en/releases/archive/May2013/14/c6730.html PRINCE EDWARD ISLAND TIME: 11:00 GOVERNMENT OF CANADA ANNOUNCEMENT - SUPPORT FOR THE NEW HORIZONS EVENT: FOR SENIORS PROGRAM IN PRINCE ... Little-Italy - See release for details URL ...

Wartime Japanese sex slaves 'necessary'
Herald Sun
WOMEN in Japan's island chain of Okinawa have demanded an apology from an outspoken Japanese politician who suggested US troops there make use of its thriving sex industry. The comments from ... Family cancer tragedy hard to fathom · Elisha Neave is ...

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Okinawa Women Demand Sex Remark Apology
Jakarta Globe
... Women Demand Sex Remark Apology Tokyo. Women in Japan's island chain of Okinawa on Wednesday demanded an apology from… ... Angelina Jolie Has Double Mastectomy to Elude Breast Cancer London. Hollywood star Angelina Jolie has had a ...

Opinion: Asian and Pacific Islander men lag behind women on health indicators
Health policy solutions
Native Hawaiians are three times more likely than non-Hispanic whites to be diagnosed with heart disease and also have the highest rates of lung cancer death. In Colorado, Asian American and Pacific Islander men lag far behind women in key health ...

Food price fears prompt obese future
Islands Business
Just as the World Bank released a report alerting how malnutrition and obesity were gripping parts of the poor countries, Vanuatu's own health department voiced concerns of the alarming state of health in the backyard of Pacific islands region. People ...

Earth Island Journal
Water Pollution Plagues Mexico's Scenic Pacific Coast
Earth Island Journal
In March 2013, when SEMARNAT deemed all beaches along the Pacific coast as safe, but the beach waters at San Francisco (known as San Pancho locally) five miles north of Sayulita, had a Enterococcus reading of 75 — double the acceptable limit in the ...

8 Things Really Successful People Do - Huffington Post
Huffington Post
... an increase in the company's value. A prostate cancer survivor, he says his biggest philanthropic contributions so far go toward a "moon shot" campaign to finding a cure for cancer, to which he's donated more than $200 million. ... By Forbes ...

Gig Harbor Life community calendar for May 17 and beyond
Kitsap Sun
Harbor History Museum is the first museum in the Pacific Northwest to host this exhibit featuring more than 14 complete specimens of large prehistoric marine creatures from Tribal Paleontology Inc., out of Colorado. The Harbor History .... St. Anthony ...

When cells suffer too much DNA damage, they are usually forced to undergo programmed cell death, or apoptosis. However, cancer cells often ignore these signals, flourishing even after chemotherapy drugs have ravaged their DNA.

A new finding from MIT researchers may offer a way to overcome that resistance: The team has identified a key protein involved in an alternative death pathway known as programmed necrosis. Drugs that mimic the effects of this protein could push cancer cells that are resistant to apoptosis into necrosis instead.

While apoptosis is a tightly controlled procedure that breaks down and disposes of the dying cell in a very orderly way, necrosis is a messier process in which the cell’s membrane ruptures and its contents spill out.

“People really used to think of necrosis as cells just falling apart, that it wasn’t programmed and didn’t require gene products to make it happen,” says Leona Samson, a member of MIT’s Center for Environmental Health Sciences and Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research. “In the last few years it has become more clear that this is an active process that requires proteins to take place.”

In the May 10 online edition of the journal Genes and Development, Samson and colleagues report that a protein known as ALKBH7 plays a key role in controlling the programmed necrosis pathway. Dragony Fu, a former postdoc in Samson’s lab, is the paper’s lead author, and postdoc Jennifer Jordan is also an author.

Unexpected findings

ALKBH7 belongs to a family of proteins first discovered in E. coli about a dozen years ago as part of a DNA-repair mechanism. In humans, there are nine different ALKBH proteins, which Samson’s lab has been studying for several years.

Most of the mammalian ALKBH proteins appear to be involved in DNA repair, similar to the original E. coli version. In particular, they respond to DNA damage caused by alkylating agents. These agents can be found in pollutants such as fuel exhaust and tobacco smoke, and are also used to treat cancer.

In the new paper, Samson, a professor of biology and biological engineering, and her colleagues found that ALKBH7 has an unexpected effect. When the researchers lowered ALKBH7 levels in human cells grown in the lab, those cells were much more likely to survive DNA damage than cells with normal ALKBH7 levels. This suggests that ALKBH7 actually promotes cell death.

“That was a surprising finding, because previously all of these ALKBH proteins were shown to be helping the cell survive when exposed to damage,” says Fu, who is now a visiting research fellow at the University of Zurich.

Upon further investigation, the researchers found that when healthy cells suffer massive DNA damage from alkylating agents, they enter the programmed necrosis pathway. Necrosis, which can also be initiated by bacterial or viral infection, is believed to help the body’s immune system detect threats.

“When dying cells release their contents during necrosis, it serves as a warning signal for your body that there is a virus there and recruits macrophages and other immune cells to the area,” Fu says.

Potential drug targets

The findings suggest that when DNA is so badly harmed that cells can’t repair it, the programmed necrosis pathway kicks in to prevent cells with major genetic damage from potentially become cancerous.

Other researchers have shown that some types of cancer cells have much lower ALKBH7 levels than normal cells. This suggests that the cancer cells have gained the ability to evade programmed necrosis, helping them to survive, Fu says.

The necrosis pathway appears to be initiated by an enzyme called PARP, which becomes hyperactive following DNA damage and shuts down the cell’s production of two molecules that carry energy, ATP and NAD. The MIT team found that ALKBH7 prevents ATP and NAD levels from returning to normal by disrupting the function of mitochondria — the cell structures that generate energy for a cell.

Without an adequate supply of those critical energy-carrying molecules, the cell cannot survive and undergoes necrosis. In cells that lack ALKBH7, ATP and NAD levels rebound, and the cells survive, carrying a heavy burden of DNA damage.

The researchers are now investigating the molecular details of the programmed necrosis pathway in hopes of identifying ways to activate it in cancer cells.

“The observations reported in this paper open up the possibility that novel treatments could be developed to treat tumors that are relatively resistant to killing via the apoptotic pathway,” says Ashok Bhagwat, a professor of chemistry at Wayne State University who was not part of the research team.

The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health and the American Cancer Society.

Surviving Is Not the End, but Just the Beginning
Huffington Post
And I'm not talking about outsmarting a bunch of other people on an island in the South Pacific. I'm talking surviving something that you're not supposed to. Something that shakes your very foundation and makes you find out what you're truly made of ...

On the fridge
Pacific Daily News
Team FEDSuperheroes is hosting a bunco dinner social to benefit the American Cancer Society Relay for Life on May 16 at the Sinajana Senior Citizens Center. Dinner is served at 5:30 p.m. Game starts at 6:30 ... Residents from all faiths are invited to ...

Photos of the week
Toronto Sun
WIREPHOTOSOFTHEWEEKMAY10--The sun is about to come up over the South Pacific Ocean in this colorful scene photographed by one of the Expedition 35 crew members aboard the Earth-orbiting International Space Station between 4 and 5 a.m. local time on May ...

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Kate Middleton Pregnant: Is Due Date July 13? - Huffington Post
Huffington Post UK
... Jubilee Tour of the Far East on September 12, 2012 in Singapore. Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge are on a Diamond Jubilee Tour of the Far East taking in Singapore, Malaysia, the Solomon Islands and the tiny ...

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Day in History: WWII Axis Give Up Africa; Lindbergh Baby Found; Berlin ...
WTVY, Dothan
In 1963, Betty Miller became the first woman to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean as she landed her Piper Apache in Brisbane, Australia, having left Oakland, Calif., on April 30, making three stopovers along the way. In 1970, the Senate voted ...

Day in History: WWII Axis Give Up Africa; Lindbergh Baby Found; Berlin ...
WTVY, Dothan
In 1963, Betty Miller became the first woman to fly solo across the Pacific Ocean as she landed her Piper Apache in Brisbane, Australia, having left Oakland, Calif., on April 30, making three stopovers along the way. In 1970, the Senate voted ...

and more »

BC Election 2013: Clark hoping for miracle with 3 days to go
Beacon News (blog)
$2 will be donated to breast cancer research for every completed survey. Both the Conservatives ... Green support, although down, remains highly concentrated in southern Vancouver Island, keeping the ridings of Oak Bay-Gordon Head, Saanich and the ...

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On the fridge
Pacific Daily News
Guam Micronesia Island Fair: Cultural dancers representing various islands in Micronesia perform at last year's Guam Micronesia Island Fair. This year's fair is set for May 17-19 at Gov. Joseph Flores Park at Ypao Beach. Pacific Sunday News file photo ...

Plume-Gate: Fukushima two years later
The Upcoming
Half of the children in and around the contaminated area are being diagnosed with cysts and nodules on their thyroid glands and are showing early warning signs of potential thyroid cancer. Even in Tokyo, doctors are reporting dramatically increased ...

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