Colon cancer is the third most commonly diagnosed cancer in the world, and it is the major cause of morbidity and mortality throughout the world. The present study aimed at treating colon cancer cell line (HCT116) with different chemotherapeutic drug/drug combinations (procaine, vorinostat “SAHA,” sodium phenylbutyrate, erlotinib, and carboplatin). Two different final concentrations were applied: 3 μM and 5 μM. Trypan blue test was performed to assess the viability of the cell before and after being treated with the drugs. The data obtained showed that there was a significant decrease in the viability of cells after applying the chemotherapeutic drugs/drug combinations. Also, DNA fragmentation assay was carried out to study the effect of these drugs on the activation of apoptosis-mediated DNA degradation process. The results indicated that all the drugs/drug combinations had a severe effect on inducing DNA fragmentation. Global DNA methylation quantification was performed to identify the role of these drugs individually or in combination in hypo- or hypermethylating the CpG dinucleotide all over the genome of the HCT116 colon cancer cell line. Data obtained indicated that different combinations had different effects in reducing or increasing the level of methylation, which might indicate the effectiveness of combining drugs in treating colon cancer cells.

No definite association was observed between consanguinity and the occurrence of facial clefts in Kuwait. General transmission models in the full data set showed no evidence of heterogeneity in the results between the Arab and nomad subsets.

This is the first study reporting the detailed distribution of ABO alleles and genotypes in Kuwaitis. Sixteen alleles were identified, including 3 novel alleles.

Expression of the highly polymorphic ABO gene cluster is commonly investigated for blood transfusion and analysis, but little information is available for Middle Eastern populations. This study determined the major ABO allele frequency in a Kuwaiti Arab cohort using a multiplex PCR-RFLP technique; 355 unrelated blood donors of phenotype A1 (46), A2 (31), A1B (6), A2B (4), B (97) and O (171) were genotyped. DNA fragments of 252 (251 for O1) and 843 (842 for A2) bp spanning the two major exons, 6 and 7, of the ABO gene were amplified and digested with HpaII and KpnI. Thirteen different genotypes could be identified when combining the A1, A2, B, O1 and O2 alleles from the digestion patterns: 1 A1 A1 (0.28%), 6 A1 A2 (1.69%), 38 A1 O1 (10.71%), 1 A1 O2 (0.28%), 1 A2 A2 (0.28%), 30 A2 O1 (8.45%), 6 A1 B (1.69%), 4 A2 B (1.13%), 12 BB (3.38%), 79 BO1 (22.25%), 6 BO2 (1.69%), 167 O1 O1 (47.04%) and 4 O1 O2 (1.13%). Two of the combinations (A2 O2, O2 O2) were not found. All genotypes determined were consistent with the serotypes. The frequencies of the five alleles in the Kuwaiti sample population were ABO*A1 = 0.0746, ABO*A2 = 0.0592, ABO*B = 0.1676, ABO*O1 = 0.6831 and ABO*O2 = 0.0155. These results are discussed with reference to gene frequencies reported for other ethnic groups.

No abstract