The study from the laboratory of Rakesh Jain, the A. Werk Cook professor of radiation oncology, appears in the October Nature Medicine . The researchers implanted a human gallbladder carcinoma into either the gallbladder wall or the subcutaneous space of the dorsal flank in mice and found that tumors grew faster in the gallbladder. In addition, plasma levels of TGF-beta1 were 300 percent higher in the group with cancer in the gallbladder. To learn whether a primary gallbladder tumor could suppress angiogenesis and tumor growth at a secondary site, the researchers then implanted tumors into the brains of the mice. TGF-beta1 also inhibited tumor cell growth in vitro.
Gallbladder cancer is treated by surgical resection of the tumor.
But this procedure cannot always prevent the rapid growth of distant metastases. Stem Cell Transplant Counters Muscular Dystrophy in Mice Researchers at HMS have made an important step toward gene therapy in people with muscular dystrophy. Severe forms of the disease are characterized by progressive muscle degeneration and early death due to a deficiency of dystrophin, a protein required for structural support of muscles. Previous attempts at gene therapy, although successful, have resulted in only local, and therefore temporary, dystrophin expression. Now HMS scientists report that they have been able to partially restore muscle dystrophin expression in mice by bone marrow transplantation of either hematopoietic stem cells or a novel population of muscle-derived stem cells.