Anatomy and Cell Biology 4429A Lecture Notes - Lecture 21: Bacteriophage, Endothelium, Mothers Against Decapentaplegic Homolog 4
12 Jan 2018
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Historically cancers have been classified and staged using microscopic approaches: abnormal overall morphology (loss of differentiation, abnormal nuclei, number of dividing cells (mitotic index; tissue-specific) Microscopically similar cancers result in different clinical outcomes i. e. prostate cancers. Serum markers (from blood) hare being used as diagnostic and prognostic tools: prostate specific antigen (psa: prostate cancer, not covered by ohip because the test has many confounders, carcino-embryonic antigen (cea: colon cancer) Imperfect test, because it oversimplifies and assumes that higher amounts correspond to increased risk of cancer: does not take a lot of other factors into consideration (same with psa test) These single marker approaches constitute oversimplification of cancer progression. Id2 = inhibitor of differentiation; binds transcription factors that would otherwise give rise to differentiation. Using all of these markers, you can classify and profile tumors with respect to stage, progression and the chances of recovery. The treatments need to be durable, such that there no need for repetitive dosage.
