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【medical-news】润肤露也能抗癌：促进DNA自我修复
Compound acts by rejuvenating ‘the guardian of the genome’. Skin cream tackles skin cancers in mice
护肤霜对抗小鼠皮肤癌
Compound acts by rejuvenating ‘the guardian of the genome’.
药物通过恢复 “基因组卫士”---- p53蛋白的活力而发挥疗效。
A skin cream that can hyperactivate the body's natural DNA repair mechanisms has been shown to protect mice from skin cancer, and to reduce the growth of cancers already present. If the compound does the same for humans, it could one day be added to sunscreen as a cancer-fighting ingredient.
一种可以提高身体自有的DNA修复机制的护肤霜显示出对小鼠皮肤癌有预防作用。并且可以抑制小鼠在体癌细胞的生长。如果该药品对人皮肤癌也同样有效，未来它将可能作为抗癌成分添加到防晒剂中。
The active component of the cream, called CP-31398, works by reactivating disabled forms of a natural tumour-suppressing protein called p53. Nicknamed ‘the guardian of the genome’, p53 controls several important cellular functions, including the repair of damaged DNA, cell division and a genetically encoded auto-destruct pathway called apoptosis that kills unhealthy cells.
护肤霜的有效成分，称为CP-31398，可以促使一种自有的肿瘤生长抑制蛋白----通常被称作“基因组卫士”的p53蛋白的失活状态得到激活。p53蛋白控制着多个重要的细胞功能过程，包括DNA损伤修复，细胞分裂和由基因编码的、杀灭不健康细胞的程序性死亡过程----细胞凋亡。
The p53 gene is mutated in over half of all human cancers. For that reason, pharmaceutical companies have been hunting compounds that can protect or restore p53 activity, in the hope that these might prevent or treat cancer.
在人类的半数以上的癌症细胞中，p53基因都发生了变异。因此，制药公司一直以来都在寻找能够保护或恢复p53蛋白活性的药物，希望能够用以预防或治疗癌症。
In 1999, researchers at Pfizer showed that CP-31398 restores normal activity to mutated p53 proteins in cell cultures (although how exactly it works is a mystery)1. Mohammad Athar, a biochemist at the University of Alabama in Birmingham, went on to test the compound in live animals.
1999年，辉瑞公司的研究人员发现，在细胞培养中，CP-31398可以使变异失活的p53蛋白的恢复到正常活性（它究竟是如何发挥作用的仍是未解之谜）。随后，伯明翰阿尔巴马大学的一位生物化学家Mohammad Athar，进行了该药物的在体动物试验。
Athar and his colleagues slathered the compound onto the skin of hairless mice, and then exposed the mice to ultraviolet (UV) light twice a week for 35 weeks. At the end of the experiment, mice treated with CP-31398 had seven tumours on average; control mice that did not receive the drug had 16.
阿瑟和同事们将CP-31398大量的涂抹到无毛小鼠的皮肤上。接下来将小鼠暴露在紫外线下，频率为一周2次，试验为期35周。试验结束时，给药组的小鼠平均有7个发生了肿瘤，而对照组小鼠是16个。
The tumours that did grow on treated mice were roughly a sixth the size of tumours in control mice. And, Athar and his colleagues found, the compound slowed the growth of preexisting skin tumours. The results are published this week in the Journal of Clinical Investigation 2.
给药组小鼠发生的肿瘤与对照组相比，体积约为后者的1/6。研究中阿瑟和他的同事们还发现，该药物能够减缓原有皮肤肿瘤细胞的生长。相关研究结果将于本周在《临床检查杂志》上刊出。
Repair cream
“I think the results of this preclinical study look promising,” says Wafik El-Deiry, a cancer biologist at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia. “If the compound survives subsequent testing it could be used as an additive to sunscreen.”
修复霜
“该项临床前研究的结果显示出了一定的前景，”费城宾夕法尼亚医学院的癌生理学家，Wafik El-Deiry发表看法说。如果该药物能够通过二期试验，它将可作为防晒油中的添加剂使用。
CP-31398 is not the first skin treatment that has been shown to repair cellular damage from sun exposure. Lotion containing fragments of DNA can ward off precancerous skin lesions in mice (see DNA-boosted sunscreen may fight cancer), and a salve containing a DNA repair protein reduces the number of skin tumours in people with a genetic defect in this DNA repair system. One important next step will be to compare how the cancer-fighting properties of CP-31398 compare not only to these experimental alternatives but also to the UV-blocking properties already in sunscreens, El-Deiry says.
CP-31398并非是首个显示具有可修复日晒引起的细胞损伤特性的皮肤治疗药物。一些含有DNA片段的护肤液也能够对小鼠癌症前期发生的细胞损害起到预防和保护作用（参见强化DNA型的防晒油可能具有抗癌效果）。含有DNA修复蛋白的药膏也可以降低DNA修复系统基因损伤而导致的人皮肤肿瘤细胞的数量。接下来的一个重要工作就是对CP-31398的抗癌活性进行对比研究，不仅是与那些临床相关药物相比较，还要针对防晒剂通常所具有的防紫外特性进行对比研究，El-Deiry说。
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作者:admin@医学,生命科学 2011-09-17 06:36
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