Uncontrolled Division Research Articles

Fabrication of facile polymeric nanocomposites based on chitosan-gr-P2-aminothiophenol for biomedical applications

Cancer is an abnormal growth of cells due to the uncontrolled division of the cells and it is the second leading cause of death globally. Immune system malfunction, inflammatory diseases, microbial infection, and oxidative damage are other causes for death. This prompted us to search for non-traditional materials that can be used as anti-cancer, anti-microbial, anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory agents. Chitosan as a non-toxic, biodegradable, biopolymer with powerful biological activity was grafted with acidified 2-aminothiophenol (2-ATH) using aqueous chemical oxidative copolymerization in presence of ammonium persulphate (APS) as an oxidant at room temperature. The prepared polymeric samples were assembled on silver nanoparticles (AgNPs). The prepared polymeric structure nano-composites were verified by infrared, ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, thermogravimetric analysis scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy. The prepared polymeric samples and their composites with AgNPs were screened for their biological activities as anti-cancer properties, anti-microbial, anti-oxidant and anti-inflammatory. The obtained data reveal that chitosan-gr-poly (2-aminothiophenol) (chitosan-gr-p2-ATH) has the most potent anti-oxidant and anti-cancer effects against HepG2 while the composites of p2-ATH with AgNPs and chitosan-gr-p2-ATH with AgNPs have the most potent anti-inflammatory properties.

Consumption of unregulated food items (false morels) and risk for neurodegenerative disease (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis)

Unknown environmental factors are thought to contribute to the etiology of sporadic forms of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Strong evidence supporting this view is found in the post-World War decline and disappearance of highincidence ALS in three Western Pacific populations that formerly utilized neurotoxic cycad seed as a traditional source of food and/or medicine. The principal toxins in cycads (cycasin) and in False Morel mushrooms (gyromitrin) generate methyl free radicals that damage DNA and cause mutation and uncontrolled division of cycling cells and degeneration of late-/postmitotic neurons. Since False Morels are scavenged for food in Finland, Russia, Spain, and USA, research studies are underway in Western Europe and USA to determine if the practice is associated with sporadic ALS.

Потребление нестабилизированных продуктов питания (строчки обыкновенные) и риск развития нейродегенеративных заболеваний (бокового амиотрофического склероза)

Unknown environmental factors are thought to contribute to the etiology of sporadic forms of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Strong evidence supporting this view is found in the post-World War decline and disappearance of highincidence ALS in three Western Pacific populations that formerly utilized neurotoxic cycad seed as a traditional source of food and/or medicine. The principal toxins in cycads (cycasin) and in False Morel mushrooms (gyromitrin) generate methyl free radicals that damage DNA and cause mutation and uncontrolled division of cycling cells and degeneration of late-/postmitotic neurons. Since False Morels are scavenged for food in Finland, Russia, Spain, and USA, research studies are underway in Western Europe and USA to determine if the practice is associated with sporadic ALS.

Prevalence of 7q deletion in patients with Acute myeloid leukemia

Introduction: Deletion of critical regions on long arm of chromosome 7 is important in pathogenesis of acute myeloid leukemia (AML). These regions include 7q22 and 7q31 which carry certain tumor suppressor genes which if deleted can result in uncontrolled division of myeloid cells. Aims: To estimate prevalence of 7q deletion in patients with acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Materials and methods: Retrospective study was done on 25 bone marrow samples diagnosed with Acute myeloid leukemia referred to Division of Human Genetics St.John’s Medical college, Bangalore. Samples were subjected to standard protocol for karyotyping and FISH. Percentage of patients who were positive for 7q deletion was calculated. Results: Out of 25 samples, 5 samples were positive for 7 q deletion accounting to 20% of total patients diagnosed with AML. Conclusion: Presence of 7q deletion can be a poor prognostic marker since tumour suppressor genes are present in these regions. Hence cytogenetic markers are very important in deciding treatment and prognosis in these patients.

Unmet Supportive Care Needs of General Cancer in Kurdistan Region- Iraq

Background: Cancer is a class of diseases or disorders characterized by uncontrolled division of cells. Objective: The study aims to to determine the SCNs of cancer patients in Iraq. Methodology: The present cross-sectional study and data was conducted in Rezgary teaching and Nankaly Oncology Hospital in the Kurdistan Federal Region of Iraq. A total of 300 eligible cancer patients were invited to participate in the study from February to August, 2018. Eligibility criteria included: 18 years or above; having a defifinite diagnosis of any type of cancer; physically or mentally able to participate in the study; and being aware of exact diagnosis for at least three months. Results: In 15 items of the SCNs, more than 60% of the participants reported that their needs were unmet. Most frequently, unmet needs were related to health system and information, physical and daily living, psychological, and patient care and support domains, and most met needs were related to physical and daily activity domains. Conclusions: Kurdish cancer patients had many unmet needs and there is a need for establishing additional supportive care services and educational programs to increase quality of life in Kurdistan Region- Iraq.

To Study theAnti-cancer Effects of Shigella Flexneri in AspC-1 Pancreatic Cancer Cell Line in Approach to Bax and bcl-2 Genes.

Cancer is the uncontrolled division of cells and can be caused by genetic or environmental factors. Pancreatic cancer is one of the deadliest among all cancers. The role of bacteria as an anticancer agent dates back to almost 100years ago. The microbiome has recently become a focus of research in carcinogenesis and even pancreatic cancer. Shigella flexneri is a gram-negative bacterium, which causes shigellosis with symptoms such as diarrhea, fever, and stomach cramps in human. Shigella flexneri may play a very important role in the internal pathways of apoptosis and may induce apoptosis in some of the cancerous cells. In this experiment bacteria were cultured on Salmonella-Shigella agar, then inoculated into BHI Broth medium. After sonication, the protein concentration of the bacterium was measured by using the ZellBio Sensitive Protein Bradford Assay kit. MTT assay was performed to obtain IC50 for the said bacterial protein. Later by cDNA kit synthesized the cDNA based on the RNA template. In the end, the results were analyzed using real-time PCR and the expression of Bax and Bcl-2 genes was measured before and after treatment. The results showed that Shigella flexneri has the potential anti-proliferative effect in pancreatic cancer. The inhibitory concentration, pro-apoptotic amount to upregulate Bax, and meanwhile also to downregulate the bcl-2 found to be 10μl. In general, due to defects in the apoptotic pathway in cancer cells and the existence of drug-resistant cells, the detection of new apoptotic inducers such as Shigella flexneri cell extract can be used for further studies on cancer therapy.

An enhanced computer-assisted lung cancer detection method using content based image retrieval and data mining techniques

Cancer is a sickness brought about by an uncontrolled division of eccentric cells in any part of human body. It is in the top of few places in the killer disease list and pervades in the entire world, but still on the rise. Most of the cases an early detection of lung cancer is cumbersome. This research paper is aimed to present an effective and an efficient way of computer-assisted detection method for lung cancer. In this research we used a set of lung computed tomography scanned images as inputs, obtained from lung image archives and applied image processing techniques such as feature extraction, segmentation. In this approach, a proper combination of Adaptive thresholding segmentation algorithm has been used for segmenting input images, a well-known Support Vector Machine image classification algorithm has been used for lung tumor classification and Content-based image retrieval technique has been used to compare lung image features such as contract, intensity, texture and shape. A set of patient personal data is included to get more accurate and correct prediction results, and it is dealt with data mining approach. The proposed segmentation method shows improved prediction results.

LUNG CANCER - STATISTICAL ANALYSIS DATA IN A 5 YEAR PERIOD IN BITOLA, REPUBLIC OF NORTH MACEDONIA

Lung cancer is one of the most common and deadly malignancies in the world, which is characterized by uncontrolled division and growth of malignant cells in the pulmonary parenchyma. For the purposes of this paper was used data from the clinical hospital “Dr. Trifun Panovski'' in the Municipality of Bitola, Republic of North Macedonia in the period of 2015-2019. The results show that the most of the cases are male with the leading age of about 55-64 years. However, the disease is becoming more common in the female population at a later age. Regarding the number of male patients treated in the Municipality of Bitola, it can be noted that the highest number of male patients was in 2018, and the lowest in 2017. Most female patients were treated in 2016 and the least in 2018. From the analysis of the Institute of Public Health, the highest number of male deaths in Bitola occurred in 2014 and the lowest in 2015 and 2018, among female patients, the highest number of deaths was in 2014, but the lowest in 2018. Death outcomes in Bitola represent about 6-7% of total number of deaths in the Republic of North Macedonia.

Abstract B24: Development of small-molecule RAS inhibitors using Affimer reagents

Abstract Ras proteins are small GTPases that are mutationally activated in around 30% of all human cancers. Oncogenic mutations in Ras trigger uncontrolled cellular differentiation and division through uninhibited Ras-GTP signaling. Despite major efforts in developing inhibitors, lack of treatments directly targeting Ras in cancer led to the current assumption that Ras is undruggable. A new approach, which involves use of biologics, has shown great potential for development of Ras inhibitors, as demonstrated by recent increase in the number of antibody mimetic reagents targeting Ras, including single domain antibodies, monobodies and DARPins. We have developed modulators of Ras activity using novel artificial binding proteins, termed Affimers. Affimers are small 91-amino-acid scaffold proteins that constrain one or two randomized nine amino acid loop regions for molecular recognition. Affimers isolated against KRas, the most commonly mutated Ras family member, displayed low nanomolar binding affinities, were shown to be effective at inhibiting nucleotide exchange and blocked interaction between Ras and its effector Raf. When expressed in mammalian cells, Affimers bound with endogenous Ras and inhibited Ras-mediated signaling. Site-directed mutagenesis of Affimer variable regions revealed three residues critical for binding and inhibition. X-ray crystal structure of Affimer in complex with KRas demonstrated that these residues bind into a hydrophobic pocket on Ras, previously described with small molecules. Currently, we are determining whether this interaction gives insight into new modes of therapeutic development using molecular docking in attempt to mimic the Affimer residues with small molecules. This project provides a unique opportunity to further our understanding of Ras biology through the development of reagents that modulate Ras activity. In addition, structural insights into mode of inhibition allow the modelling and design of small-molecule compounds, providing novel therapeutic strategies to slow Ras-addicted tumor growth. Citation Format: Katarzyna Haza, Heather Martin, Christian Tiede, Kevin Tipping, Chi Trinh, Holly Foster, Rachel Trowbridge, Richard Foster, Thomas Edwards, Alexander Breeze, Michael McPherson, Darren Tomlinson. Development of small-molecule RAS inhibitors using Affimer reagents [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the AACR Special Conference on Targeting RAS-Driven Cancers; 2018 Dec 9-12; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Mol Cancer Res 2020;18(5_Suppl):Abstract nr B24.

Function in, and Mutation of, the p53 Protein: Exploring Tumor Suppression and the Development of Cancer

Cancer has recently become the leading cause of death in high income countries with heart disease retaining this infamous position among middle and lower‐income countries. In the United States over 500,000 people die annually from cancer with skin, lung, prostate, breast, and colorectal cancers ranking as its most deadly forms. Cancer disproportionately impacts older adults with 70% of cases occurring in people over 50 years of age, while 5% of such cases occur in individuals younger than 15 years old. Given that the risk of developing cancer is influenced by genetic inheritance and can be caused by a variety of common environmental factors including chemical carcinogens, ionizing and ultraviolet radiation, and viruses and bacteria, what molecular machines protect us during our early life from the uncontrolled cellular division characteristic of malignant and metastasizing cancer cells? To better understand the processes underlying our bodies built in protective mechanisms the Blue Valley CAPS 2020 SMART Team (Students Modeling a Research Topic), with support of the CBM at MSOE, modeled the p53 tumor suppressor protein using JMol and 3D printing technologies. The p53 protein, a transcription activator, is coded by the TP53 gene found on the short arm of chromosome 17. It is composed of 393 amino acids and contains three distinct domains; the core DNA binding, transactivation, and tetramerization domains. Depending on the level of cellular stress and resulting DNA damage, p53 can act as a protector that leads to cell cycle arrest and tumor prevention, through either a cyclin‐dependent kinase inhibitor during G1 or the inhibition of Cdc2 during the G2/M transition, or as a killer causing apoptosis and tumor suppression through binding and regulation of bax gene transcription of Bcl‐2 which controls the release of cytochrome c from the mitochondria. Both of these actions are mediated by the DNA binding domain which displays a compact fold composed of an antiparallel b‐sheet sandwich, and a loop‐sheet‐helix motif and 2 large loops which bond directly to the major and minor grooves, respectively. The target of these interactions is with the 10 base pair consensus sequence 5’‐PuPuPuC(A/T)(T/A)GPyPyPy‐3’. The protein’s two large loops are stabilized by the coordination of a Zinc ion which steadies the loop‐sheet‐helix as well. With the overall importance of this protein as a tumor suppressor, it is understandable that 50% of all cancers involved mutations in the p53 gene, with 70% of these mutations occurring in its DNA binding domain. The majority of mutations in the DNA binding domain, 35%, occur within one of six arginine residues that are either critical for binding or for aiding in the stabilization of the binding surface. Mutations in these areas inhibit the proper function of p53 and lead to an induction of the cell cycle and blocking of apoptosis, which are characteristics of the rapidly dividing cells found in malignant tumors.

Impacts of Informal Settlements on Housing Development: The Case of Debre Berhan Town, Amhara Regional State, Ethiopia

The issue of inadequate housing is the difficulty that millions of lower and middle-income groups in urban areas of the developing world face. This study is an assessment of informal settlements and its impacts on housing developments in Debre Berhan town. The core problem identified in this research is the uncontrollable illegal division of lands for substandard housing. The study aimed to examine the characteristics informal settlements focusing on housing standards, causes of Informal settlements including their impacts in the housing developments, the different modes of informal land acquisition mechanisms, evaluating the legal responses for informal settlers to solve these impacts and to propose a possible preventive and curative solution for the informal settlement expansion in the town. The research design employed in the study was a mixed type and the combination of probability and purposive sampling techniques were used. Both quantitative and qualitative data were collected from primary and secondary sources, and the methods of data collection from primary were direct observation, interviews, field questionnaire surveys, and instrumental use. The result of the study of informal settlements in the town was characterized by legal, socioeconomic, and environment due to the inefficiency of the formal land supply process, to deliver adequate land for housing, population growth, urbanization, socio-cultural factors, and others. And the major mechanisms of informal land acquired through purchasing lands from informal land market and inheritance. The physical, social, political, and environmental problems were the impacts that are caused by informal settlements and the local government’s response was regulating and demolition. The study recommended the entire land development and management system to address vital areas of strategic physical planning, cadastral surveying, land recording and registration, and well-managed land information system to improve the land availability factor in the town and help to control informal settlements. This research will have a positive contribution to promoting the realization of the right to adequate housing with security of tenure for informal settlements in Debre Berhan town.

Analysis of CT images for detection of Colorectal Cancers using Hybrid Artificial Neural Networks and Fire Fly Algorithm

Abstract The longest part of the large intestine or colon is called as rectum. The uncontrolled division of cells in the colon forming a polyp at initial stage is called as colorectal cancer. Initially the polyp formed may be benign and later it may turn out to be malignant. The advancements in the field of medicine has made the screening techniques to be an effective tool in identification of the colon cancer. Early detection of the colon cancer may lead to complete cure of the disease normally, but it is very difficult to diagnose at the start. It is because, it does not show any symptoms at initial stages. Colonoscopy, a type of computed tomography (CT) is usually recommended for the patients to detect the colon cancer and it is usually a painful test conduct to identify the disease. To relieve the patients from the suffering, image processing algorithms like Weighted Adaptive Scalable Invariant Transform (WASIT) is used for extraction of features like location, orientation and scale are used as inputs to train the Artificial Neural Network (ANN) using Back Propagation Algorithm (BPA). The optimal set of weights are obtained by adjusting the weights for BPA hybrid with Genetic Algorithm (GA) and Fire Fly Algorithm (FFA). The Likelihood Ratio (LR+) is found to optimal for the BPA tuned with FFA and is inferred to be in the range of 1.5 to 4 which varies with a deviation of ±0.4% from the nominal value.

Aberrant p16 methylation as an early diagnostic marker in blood of hepatocellular carcinoma patients

BackgroundAlpha-fetoprotein (AFP) is currently used for serologic screening in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) but with low sensitivity ranging 41–65% with a high rate of false-negative and false-positive results. For the hypermethylation of the p16 inhibitor of cyclin-dependent kinase 4 (p16INK4A), a tumor suppressor gene results in the uncontrolled division of cells. This suggests that the loss of p16INK4A function due to promoter methylation may be an early event in HCC pathogenesis so the study aimed to assess aberrant p16INK4A gene methylation as an early diagnostic marker in HCC patients.ResultsOur study revealed a highly significant increase of p16INK4A methylation in patients versus controls (Fisher, 36.11; p < 0.01). P16INK4A methylation was detected in 86.6% (26/30) and none of the controls were methylated (100% specificity) compared to the low sensitivity of AFP 65.38% at a cutoff value of 28 ng/mL. Data revealed non-significant difference of p16INK4A methylation status between different HCC Barcelona stages (Fisher, 0.055; p > 0.05). While, AFP levels were statistically significantly higher in stages B and C (median = 243,400 ng/mL, respectively, when compared to stage A (median = 10 ng/mL) (H:16.667, p < 0.01)).ConclusionEarly diagnosis of HCC can be achieved through the detection of p16INK4A gene methylation in chronic liver disease (CLD) patients with normal serum AFP especially in known cirrhotic patients that deteriorate clinically without apparent etiology.

An Improved Lung Cancer Prediction System using Image Processing

Lung cancer is a disease that causes the cells present in the lungs which divide uncontrollably. This uncontrollable division of cells causes tumours which in turn decrease a person’s respiration. Early identification and diagnosis will help people to seek treatment and recover soon. Tumours are an abnormal mass of tissue that results when cells divide more than they should or do not die when they should. Identifying lung cancer in its early stages is very difficult but knowing about its symptoms is quite easy. Symptoms may be similar to those of respiratory problems or infections and sometimes there may be no symptoms at all. In this work mainly deals with the lung cancer detection using image processing techniques were involving all the intermediate stages such as pre-processing stage, noise removal, processing stage, post-processing stage which finally gives output image after all those stages. Doctors can categorize tumour stage as initial or advanced based on patient CT scan report. The abnormal images are subjected to segmentation (threshold segmentation, watershed transformation) to focus on tumour portion. It mainly deals with image quality and clarity. Gabor filter algorithm plays a vital role for image enhancement in removing noise from an image. The ANN method gives us the best performance as it neglects the background and displays the required portion of an image that we need. This image processing technique is one of the most efficient way of detecting lung cancer.

Efficient Way to Detect Bone Cancer using Image Segmentation

Malignant growth is a wild division of irregular cells, which is spread over the parts of the body. Bone disease is one of the sorts of malignancy. Bone malignancy is a pernicious and threatening illness, caused because of uncontrolled division of cells in the bone. The most compromising and usually happened malignancy is bone disease. Prior the location of bone malignant growth is most testing issue. A definitive objective of this paper is to play out an examination on the bone disease pictures to discover the tumor. In this exploration we are looking at K-implies and fluffy C-Means grouping procedures to recognize the presize accuracy tumor part in the bone. In this exploration at first picture experiences into the division procedure and k-implies and Fuzzy C-Means calculations are connected to distinguish the exact tumor part in the bone. In this exploration is completely utilized MATLAB as a programming instrument for the way toward stacking a picture and to perform picture division. For clear comprehension of this exploration the outline and the outcomes will be shown in the sessions of this paper

A novel approach for breast cancer prediction using optimized ANN classifier based on big data environment.

Cancer is caused by the un-controlled division of abnormal cells in a body part. Various cancers exist in this world and one amongst them is breast cancer. Breast cancer (BC) threatens the lives of people and today, it is the secondary prime cause of death in women. Numerous research directions concentrated on the prediction of BC. The prevailing prediction model is time-consuming and have less accuracy. To trounce those drawbacks, this paper proposed a BC prediction system (BCPS) utilizing Optimized Artificial Neural Network (OANN). Primarily, the unprocessed BC data are regarded as the input. The big data (BD) storage comprises some repeated information. Secondarily, such repeated data are eliminated by utilizing Hadoop MapReduce. In the subsequent stage, the data are preprocessed utilizing replacing of missing attributes (RMA) and normalization techniques. Subsequently, the features are generally chosen by utilizing Modified Dragonfly algorithm (MDF). Then, the selected features are inputted for classification. Here, it classifies the features utilizing OANN. Optimization is done by employing the Gray Wolf Optimization (GWO) algorithm. Experiential outcomes are contrasted with prevailing IWDT (Improved Weighted-Decision Tree) in respect of precision, recall, accuracy, and ROC.

Hyperplasia of Wistar rat tongue mucosa due to exposure to cigarette side-stream smoke

Background: Hyperplasia, a condition whereby an excessive number of cells are produced due to their uncontrolled division, represents a common symptom of carcinogenesis. Cancer is a physical manifestation of cell malignancy resulting from abnormal proliferation. Globally, oral cancer currently constitutes the sixth largest lethal form of the condition. The most common etiology of oral cancer is tobacco of which cigarettes are the most popular related product. The health risks associated with cigarette smoke not only affect active smokers but also individuals who ingest it passively. Sidestream smoke comes from the lighted end of a burning tobacco product such as a cigarette, pipe or cigar and contains nicotine and many harmful cancer-causing chemicals. Inhaling sidestream smoke increases the risk of lung and other types of cancer. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to understand how sidestream cigarette smoke initiates precancerous changes, in this case hyperplasia, in the oral mucosa epithelium of Wistar rats. Methods: The subjects were divided into three groups, a 4-week treatment group (P1), an 8-week treatment group (P2), and a control group (K), each consisting of ten subjects. The subjects were exposed to a daily two-cigarette dose of smoke. The experiment used a post-test only control group design. All samples were sacrificed during the fourth and eighth weeks. Haematoxylin-eosin staining was performed on the tongues of the Wistar rats to establish the presence of hyperplasia. Data was analyzed using a one-way ANOVA test. Results: After the Wistar rats had been exposed to cigarette smoke, an increased degree of epithelial cell proliferation (hyperplasia) showed a significant difference with a p-value &lt;0.05 during the eighth week. Conclusion: Exposure to cigarette sidestream smoke induces increased epithelial cell proliferation (hyperplasia) in Wistar rats.

Recent Advances in Identifying Biomarkers and High-Affinity Aptamers for Gynecologic Cancers Diagnosis and Therapy.

Cancer is the uncontrollable abnormal division of cell growth, caused due to the varied reasons. Cancer can be expressed in any part of the body, and it is one of the death-causing diseases. Human reproductive organs are commonly damaged by cancer. In particular, the women reproductive system is affected by various cancers including ovarian, cervical, endometrial, vaginal, fallopian tube, and vulvar cancers. Identifying these cancers at earlier stages prevents the damage to the organs. Aptamer is the potential probe that can identify these cancers. Aptamer is an artificial antibody selected from the randomized library of molecules and has a high binding affinity to the target biomarker. Targeting cancers in the reproductive organs using aptamers showed an excellent efficiency of detection compared to other probes. Different aptamers have been generated against the gynaecological cancer biomarkers, which include HE4, CA125, VEGF, OCCA (for ovarian cancer), EGFR, FGFR1, K-ras (for endometrial cancer), HPV E-16, HPV E-7, HPV E-6, tyrosine, and kinase (for cervical cancer), which help to identify the cancers in woman reproductive organs. In this overview, the biomarkers for gynecologic cancers and the relevant diagnosing systems generated using the specific aptamers are discussed. Furthermore, the therapeutic applications of aptamer with gynaecological cancers are narrated.

Immunohistochemical Study of Cell Proliferation in Hepatocellular Carcinoma

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), the most common primary liver cancer, with a poor prognosis, is the fifth most common cancer in men and the seventh in women. The study was made on 32 surgically removed liver carcinomas. In order to compare results, we included a group of non-tumor lesions obtained by liver biopsy. Assessment of the proliferative activity of the studied liver lesions was made using immunohistochemical stains with the monoclonal Ki-67 antibody, clone MIB-1 ready-to-use (DAKO Cytomation CA, USA), in the LSAB-HRP work system. To appreciate the proliferation index of Ki-67 (PI Ki-67), we used the semi-automated method of counting the nuclei on digital images. The statistical analysis was performed using SPSS software, Version 20.0 (IBM SPSS Statistics) and Microsoft Office Excel 2007. Mean value of Ki-67 index was 0.4 � 0.2 in normal liver, 3.52 � 0.2 in non-tumor liver lesions and 13.4�7.7 in HCC (p [ 0.001). In chronic hepatitis, PI Ki-67 varied between 2.5 and 5.8 %, with a mean value of 5.2% in portal chronic hepatitis and 5.5% in active chronic hepatitis with cirrhotic evolution. In HCC, the values of Ki-67 index were between 0.7% and 52%, with a mean of PI Ki-67 of 13.43�7.7. 66.6% of HCC associated with hepatitis B virus infection and those developped from a cirrhotic lesion had a high Ki-67 score (p = 0.1). The results we obtained showed: a low Ki-67 score in patients with well-differentiated HCC (G1) (p[0.001), with or without capsule infiltration (p = 0.003); high PI Ki-67 in 33.33% of HCC detected in the right hepatic lobe and those extended bilaterally at the moment of diagnosis (p = 0.142) and a significant relationship between high Ki-67 score and vascular invasion (p [ 0.001), the presence of intrahepatic metastasis being correlated with a high proliferative rate (p [ 0.001). Differences between the proliferation rate of HCC and non-tumor liver lesions (p [ 0.001) show that the uncontrolled division of tumor cells can play an important role in the developpment of HCC.

Relationship of telomerase with the processes of cellular senescence and apoptosis

The telomeres are the free ends of the chromosomes, consisting of non-coding and highly repetitive DNA. They were discovered by Hermann Joseph Muller along with Barbara McClintock during the decade of the 30s of the 20th century, who received the Nobel Prize for such a discovery. Formerly, the etiology of aging pointed to a state, which may have been caused by a gene or by a decline in the physiological system. With the passage of time, it was replaced by the principle that such a factor consists of a multifactorial process resulting from the interaction of cellular and systematic mechanisms. Although many cases of neoplasms are diagnosed in young people, the relationship between older age and cancer is unequivocal. At the cellular level, evidence points to a similarity between these factors. Cellular aging is defined as the lack of somatic division accompanied by loss of function (cellular senescence). While cancer is the result of uncontrolled divisions accompanied by loss or changes of their functions.