Detection and analysis of apoptosis in peripheral blood cells from breast cancer patients

Abstract

Apoptosis is a well-known specific process of cell death that normally occurs in physiological situations such as tissue or organ development and involution. During tumor growth there is a balance between proliferation and cell death which involves apoptotic mechanisms. In the present study genomic DNAs from 120 breast tumor biopsies were analyzed by agarose gel electrophoresis and none of them presented the fragmentation pattern characteristic of the apoptosis process. However, 33% of the 105 breast cancer patients clearly showed the apoptotic pattern when DNA from blood cells was analyzed. None of the DNAs from healthy volunteer blood cells showed any trace of apoptosis. Since the breast cancer patients were not receiving chemoor hormone therapy, the possible relationship between blood cortisol levels and the apoptotic pattern found in patient blood cells was investigated. Using a chemoluminescence immunodetection assay, similar cortisol levels were observed in breast cancer patient sera presenting or not apoptotic blood cells and in healthy volunteer sera. Analysis of the clinical data obtained from 60 of these patients showed that patients bearing tumors of smaller size (under 20 mm) were more susceptible to the apoptotic effect in blood cells. According to the Elston grade, it was observed that 7 of 12 patients with grade III tumors (58%) presented apoptotic peripheral blood cells, in contrast to 10 of 48 patients with grade I and grade II tumors. These observations may reflect the immunosuppression characteristic of some breast cancer patients, which may contribute to tumor growth. Therefore, further studies are necessary to elucidate the factor(s) involved in such massive blood cell death. Correspondence

Avaliação da caspase-3 e Ki-67 como marcadores prognósticos nas neoplasias mamárias em cadelas

“…Por outro lado, durante o crescimento tumoral há um equilíbrio entre proliferação celular e apoptose 34 . Dessa maneira, se a presença de um grande número de marcadores apoptóticos possuir grande correlação com a proliferação celular, o indivíduo apresentará um prognóstico menos favorável 27 .…”

“…Isto é explicado porque durante o crescimento tumoral há um balanço entre a proliferação e a morte celular, onde o processo de apoptose está envolvido 34 . Sendo assim, o alto número de células apoptóticas juntamente com um alto índice de proliferação celular representam um prognóstico não favorável 27 .…”

Inhibition of induced-hepatic cancer in vivo through IQGAP1-shRNA gene therapy and modulation of TRAIL-induced apoptosis pathway

“…Thus, the authors reported that the characteristic changes in cell shape of blood cells in cancer and treated-cancer cells are of value for interpreting the membrane alterations during apoptosis ( 61 , 62 ). The second opinion suggested that apoptosis in peripheral blood cells was activated in 33% of breast cancer patients ( 63 ). Based on these two suggestions, we investigated apoptosis of the circulating blood cells in the cancer-induced mice to agree or disagree with this suggested phenomenon.…”

Efeito comparativo de dietas ricas em linhaça marrom e dourada no câncer de mama

“…Talvez o mecanismo pelo qual a linhaça induza a apoptose seja semelhante ao do tamoxifeno. A verificação da apoptose por esta análise se dá pela visualização de um padrão de escada ("ladder") no gel de agarose, como pode ser observado na figura 5 (Simão et al 1999) devido à quebra da cromatima em fragmentos de nucleossomos (Matassov 2004).…”