Personalized Medicine Universe最新文献

In May the 2013, Regenerative Medicine Promotion Act was enacted in order to promote regenerative medicine in Japan. Based on this Act, in November 2014, the Act on the Safety of Regenerative Medicine, which ensured the safety of regenerative medicine, was put into effect. The Act on the Safety of Regenerative Medicine was intended to promote the swift and safe provision and promulgation of regenerative medicine, and it applies to both clinical research and private practice that utilizes regenerative medicine.

In this review, an overview of the Act on the Safety of Regenerative Medicine is introduced, and the current state of this act and future issues are discussed.

DNA methylation is a very important mechanism for regulating gene expression in normal development and cell differentiation. However, DNA methylation, when acting on the promoter region of a tumor suppressor gene, suppresses transcription and is one of the major epigenetic modifications involved in the development and progression of many cancers (Wajed et al., 2001; Morris and Chan 2015). In our laboratory, we have carried out methylation analysis of 14 different tumor suppressor genes in cell-free DNA from the peripheral blood of over 1400 cancer patients, and have detected more than a total of 1900 methylations. We performed an analysis of DNA methylations of 14 different tumor suppressor genes, by type of cancer, stage of cancer, function of tumor suppressor genes, and their correlation to genetic mutations.

Purpose

This study was designed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of a compound supplement containing glucosamine (GS), chondroitin sulfate (CS), and five bioactive ingredients for improvement of knee osteoarthritis (OA).

Methods

Sixteen volunteers aged ≥40 years with knee pain and without ambulant treatment participated in a 6-week randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study. They were assigned to the dietary supplement or placebo groups (n = 8, respectively) and ingested six capsules twice daily. The OA symptoms of each subject were determined in pre- and post-treatment periods using a visual analog scale for pain (VAS pain) and four Japanese Knee Osteoarthritis Measure (JKOM) subscales (“joint stiffness,” “daily living,” “social activities,” and “general health condition”). For safety and biomarker assessments, blood and urine samples were tested.

Results

In the treatment group, the subjective symptoms of VAS pain and three JKOM subscale scores except for “social activities” were significantly improved compared to pre-treatment. Among them, the pattern of change in “joint stiffness” and total JKOM scores showed a significant difference between groups (p = 0.008 and 0.041, respectively). The serum level of interleukin-6, a systemic inflammation biomarker, was significantly decreased in the treatment group after 6 weeks (p = 0.019), whereas the level remained stable in the placebo group (p = 0.690). Diagnostic urine and hematological parameters revealed no serious adverse differences following dietary supplementation over the 6-week study.

Conclusion

These findings suggest that the compound supplementation of functional food ingredients has potential as an adjunctive and safe therapy for knee OA.

Purpose

This study was designed to evaluate the suppressive effect of the oral administration of the freeze-dried honey bee larvae powder on atopic dermatitis (AD)-like skin lesions in NC/Nga mice.

Methods

The effects of freeze-dried honey bee larvae powder on AD-like skin lesions in mice were studied by evaluating the condition of the skin macroscopically and histopathologically, ear swelling degree, serum levels of total IgE, interleukin-4 (IL-4) and interferon-γ (IFN-γ), and level of IL-18 and IL-12 in skin lesions.

Results

NC/Nga mice fed the freeze-dried honey bee larvae powder-supplemented diet showed a decrease in dermatitis scores of the dorsal skin, ear thickness, skin hypertrophy, inflammatory cell infiltration in the skin, serum total IgE, IL-4, and IFN-γ levels, and IL-18 and IL-12 levels in skin lesions. These results suggest that the freeze-dried powder of honey bee larvae inhibits the development of AD-like skin lesions in NC/Nga mice by suppressing both T-helper (Th) 1 and Th 2 cell responses.

Conclusions

Our results indicate that oral administration of the freeze-dried honey bee larvae powder could provide an adjunctive therapy for the management of AD.

Recently, precision medicine has gained attention in several fields of medical society. Today's medical consensus revolves around Evidence-Based Medicine (EBM) built on the results of many randomized controlled trials. Ever since the advent of EBM, guidelines based on EBM have provided a basis for clinical decision-making. Treatments based on these guidelines largely improved the prognosis of a certain ailment. However, these guidelines can only provide the best fit based on the statistics. Treatments based on the statistics leave behind many un- or less-responsive patients. Herein, we explain in detail the concept of “precision medicine” launched by the Obama administration in the U.S., its difference from personalized medicine, how it started to take shape, and the benefits it is expected to bring to our society.

Coffee is the most widely consumed beverage around the world, and it contains many compounds that have beneficial effects on human health. Chlorogenic acid (CGA), the most abundant polyphenol in coffee, has been reported to inhibit cancer cell growth and has a beneficial effect on ameliorating aging-related diseases. We found that CGA decreased HIF-1α levels in human hepatoma cell line Hep3B under hypoxic conditions (O₂ = 1%) in a dose-dependent manner, thereby decreasing the expression of its downstream targets EPO and VEGF. However, similar effects were not found in the presence of 100 μM 2,2′-dipyridyl. Further studies showed that the lysosomal protease inhibitor NH₄Cl inhibited the decrease in HIF-1α levels, whereas the proteasome inhibitor MG132 did not, indicating that CGA requires lysosomal protease to affect the hypoxia response.