With slight changes in the switch,' you can get a tremendous step up in a body's sensitivity to cancer agents. Turning the system up or down might have value, says Yamamoto. By turning down an organism's ability to squelch carcinogens, you could get an exquisitely sensitive model for testing, say, which pollutants in the Chesapeake Bay cause tumors to form. Likewise, you could turn it up and, in theory, increase any animal's resistance to cancer or, perhaps, other diseases. The researchers believe the system is a common, general one in many animals.
Toxicity plays a role in many conditions such as atherosclerosis and neurodegenerative diseases.
The studies were funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health and by gifts from the Lewis and Dorothy Cullman Foundation, New York. The Nrf2-depleted mice were developed by Masayuki Yamamoto, M.D., Ph. You can access some fairly dramatic photos from this study, showing the difference in the stomach lining of normal mice given the benzpyrene carcinogen they have some natural protection and the knockout mice where the protective system has been destroyed. The large mass in the knockouts, which looks like mashed potato, is tumor.