Well, well, well – it looks like the mainstream has accidentally stumbled upon the truth that skin cancer might be caused by something other than the sun. Researchers have found that some strains of HPV, a common sexually acquired virus, can dramatically increase your skin cancer risk.
Read the full story.

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

for Development of Therapies

for Heart Disease and Cancer

Science(July 30, 2010) — Researchers seeking to learn more about stroke by studying how the body responds to toxins in snake venom are releasing new findings that they hope will aid in the development of therapies for heart disease and, surprisingly, cancer.

The Japanese team is reporting in a Journal of Biological Chemistry “Paper of the Week” that they are optimistic that inhibiting a protein found on the surface of blood cells known as platelets may combat both irregular blood clotting and the spread of certain cancers throughout the body.

“The finding that platelets not only play a role in blood clotting but also in the development of vessels that allow tumors to flourish was quite unexpected and paves the way for new research on the role or roles of platelets,” says Katsue Suzuki-Inoue, the associate professor at the University of Yamanashi who oversaw the 13-person team’s work in professor Yukio Ozaki’s laboratory.

About platelets, blood clots and stroke

Under normal conditions, platelets are activated to become sticky when blood vessels are injured, and their clumping together (aggregation or clotting) naturally stops bleeding. But, irregular platelet aggregation caused by disease can lead to dangerous clots or even stroke if a clot clogs or bursts in a vessel that carries oxygen and nutrients to the brain.

“When a blood clot, or thrombus, forms during the body’s normal repair process, it’s doing its job,” says Suzuki-Inoue. “But, thrombotic diseases, such as heart attack and stroke, are leading causes of death in developed countries. Understanding and manipulating the underlying chemical reactions could help us save many lives.”

But what does this have to do with snake venom? It’s sort of a long story.

How venom can prevent or cause clotting

“Snake venom contains a vast number of toxins that target proteins in platelets,” says Yonchol Shin, an associate professor at Kogakuin University who specializes in snake toxins. “Some of those toxins prevent platelets from clotting, which can lead to profuse bleeding in snake bite victims. Others, like the one we’ve focused this research on, potently activate platelets, which results in blood clots. Identification of the molecular targets of many of these toxins has made an enormous contribution to our understanding of platelet activation and related diseases.”

Intrigued by the then-recent discovery that elements in snake venom can promote irregular aggregation of platelets — the kind that leads to clots and stroke — Inoue’s and Ozaki’s team set out in 1997 to understand better the molecular underpinnings of those chemical reactions. They hoped that whatever they learned could be applied to the search for new therapies for irregular blood clotting caused by disease.

In 2000, another set of investigators came across a protein on the surface of platelets and dubbed it C-type lectin-like receptor 2, or CLEC-2. At the time, it remained unclear how CLEC-2 was produced or what its job was, but the team suspected it was worth further study.

After six years of research and collaborations with British investigators, the team in 2006 discovered how rhodocytin — a molecule purified from the venom of the Southeast Asia pit viper Calloselasma rhodastoma — binds to the CLEC-2 receptor protein on the platelet surface, spurring the platelet to clot with others like it.

Then, in another JBC “Paper of the Week” in 2007, Suzuki-Inoue and her colleagues reported how a separate molecule, called podoplanin, binds to the CLEC-2 platelet receptor protein very much like the venom molecule does. Discovered in 1990, podoplanin is a protein expressed on the surface of cancer cells, and, when bound to the CLEC-2 receptor on platelets, it spurs blood clotting, too.

“To shield themselves from the immune system, cancer cells send out a chemical, podoplanin, which binds to the CLEC-2 receptor protein on platelets, telling the platelets to get together and form a protective barrier around the cancer cells. Once enveloped, the cancer cells are not detected by the immune system and are able to bind to blood vessels’ inner linings and spread, or metastasize, throughout the body,” she explained.

Using a mouse model, the team in 2008 showed that blocking the tumor protein podoplanin from binding with the platelet receptor protein CLEC-2 could prevent tumors from metastasizing to the lung.

From snake venom to platelets to tumors

The recent investigations by the team, published in the JBC online July 4, hinged on the generation and study of genetically engineered mouse embryos that lacked the platelet receptor protein CLEC-2. In the end, the experiments showed that CLEC-2 is not only necessary for blood clotting but also necessary for the development of a different type of vessel, specifically lymphatic vessels that carry fluid away from tissues and prevent swelling, or edema.

“During fetal development, the CLEC-2 deficiency disturbed the normal process of blood clotting and, in fact, the normal development and differentiation of blood and lymphatic vessels,” says Masanori Hirashima, an associate professor at Kobe University. “They had disorganized and blood-filled lymphatic vessels and severe swelling.”

Podoplanin, Hirashima explains, is also expressed on the surface of certain types of lymphatic cells and is known to play a role in the development of lymphatic vessels: “These findings suggest that the interaction between CLEC-2 and podoplanin in lymphatic vessels is necessary for the separation between blood vessels and lymphatic vessels.”

It has been known that tumors generate blood vessels to promote their growth, and it’s possible that the formation of lymphatic vessels also may contribute to the spread of cancer throughout the body, says Osamu Inoue, an assistant professor at the University of Yamanashi.

“We speculate that the interaction between the platelet’s CLEC-2 protein and the podoplanin molecule in lymphatic cells plays an essential role in the creation of lymphatic vessels, thereby facilitating tumor growth. If this is the case, a drug that blocks that interaction would prevent the spread of tumors through lymphatic vessels,” Inoue said.

By being deemed a “Paper of the Week,” the team’s work is categorized in the top 1 percent of papers reviewed by the JBC editorial board in terms of significance and overall importance. Other contributors included Guo Ding, Satoshi Nishimura, Kazuya Hokamura, Koji Eto, Hirokazu Kashiwagi, Yoshiaki Tomiyama, Yutaka Yatomi and Kazuo Umemura.

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

The Cancer-Causing Sex Virus

Matthew Herper, 07.21.10, 04:15 PM EDT

HPV–known for causing cervical cancer–is

emerging as the leading cause of throat cancer in

men. Should they get the vaccine too?

Nine Things You Need To Know About HPV

Martin Duffy, a Boston consultant and economist, thought he just had a sore throat. When it persisted for months, he went to the doctor and learned there was a tumor on his tonsils.

Duffy, now 70, had none of the traditional risk factors for throat cancer. He doesn’t smoke, doesn’t drink and has run 40 Boston marathons. Instead, his cancer was caused by the human papilloma virus (HPV), which is sexually transmitted and a common cause of throat and mouth cancer.

HPV tumors have a better prognosis than those caused by too many years of booze and cigarettes. But Duffy “is in the unlucky 20%” whose cancer comes back–despite rounds of chemotherapy and radiation that melted 20 more pounds off a lean 150-pound frame. Now the cancer has spread throughout his throat, making eating and talking difficult. “I made my living as a public speaker,” he says. “Now I sound like Daffy Duck.” Duffy believes he has only a few months left. “How do you tell the people you love you love them?” he asks.

Nine Things You Need To Know About HPV

Most strains of the HPV virus are harmless, but persistent infections with two HPV strains cause 70% of the 12,000 cases of cervical cancers diagnosed annually in the U.S. Other forms of the sexually transmitted virus can cause penile and anal cancer, and genital warts. The HPV throat cancer connection has emerged in just the last few years and is so new that the government doesn’t track its incidence. Researchers believe it is transmitted via oral sex. But top researchers estimate that there are 11,300 HPV throat cancers each year in the U.S.–and the numbers are growing fast as people have been having more sexual partners since the 1960s. By 2015 there could be 20,000 cases. For more surprising discoveries about HPV, read here.

These big numbers have some top researchers arguing that drug makers should test whether HPV vaccines now used to prevent cervical cancer in women can also prevent throat infections in boys. Two vaccines, Gardasil from Merck ( MRK – news – people ) and Cervarix from GlaxoSmithKline ( GSK – news – people ), are approved for preventing cervical cancer. Gardasil is approved for use in boys only to prevent genital warts.

Vaccinating boys could stop this meteoric increase in throat cancer. “Clearly, boys need to be vaccinated,” says Marshall Posner, the incoming medical director of head and neck cancer at Mt. Sinai Medical Center in New York. “I want my kids to be vaccinated. I don’t see a downside to these vaccines.”

There’s only one problem: The vaccine manufacturers aren’t terribly hot on the idea. GlaxoSmithKline says it has no plans to study throat cancer. It adds that it is “committed to providing a vaccine specifically designed to protect against cervical cancer in girls and young women.”

Merck, the maker of Gardasil, seemed more interested a couple of years ago. In 2008 it funded Maura Gillison, the Ohio State University researcher who established the HPV-throat-cancer link in 2000, to do a pilot study to show that test could reliably detect HPV infection in the throat. The pilot study was successful. By early 2009 Gillison says that a larger study of the vaccine in throat cancer looked close to being green lit.

But after Merck agreed to buy rival Schering-Plough ( SGP – news – people ) for $41 billion in March 2009, interest in a big study seemed to evaporate, Gillison says. In a statement, Merck says that “due to competing research and business priorities, we decided not to move ahead with an efficacy study at this time.”

The drug makers’ reticence probably stems from a fear that a throat-cancer vaccine would be hard to get approved. Papilloma viruses usually cause cancer slowly, causing pre-cancerous lesions that take many years to blossom into full-fledged malignant tumors. Papilloma viruses cause the horn-like growths in rabbits that probably gave rise to myths of “jackalopes” in the American West. In the cervix, early abnormal growths can be picked up with a diagnostic test, the Pap smear. Clinical trials of Gardasil and Cervarix took advantage of this, measuring the number of pre-cancerous growths prevented by the vaccines.

But there are no easy-to-detect pre-cancers in the throat. Adolescent boys would have to be followed for decades to to see if the vaccine prevented throat cancer, an unlikely scenario. Short of this, studies could only look at the prevention of HPV throat infections, not cancer or cancer precursors directly. Approving a vaccine for wide use based on this type of short-term data would require a leap of faith that the Food and Drug Administration might not be willing to take.

Top researchers say the federal government needs to step in and fund the long study if drug companies cannot be persuaded to do it themselves. “I’m sorry Merck decided not to do it,” says Posner. “But in the end, this is a federal responsibility. It’s a public health issue.”

For his part, Martin Duffy thinks that drug companies’ complacent attitude toward throat cancer would be different if more of their employees were in his situation. “It will change real fast,” he says, “if one of their executives comes down with this disease.”

Sourced & published by Henry Sapiecha

Studies have shown that EDTA is highly effective at removing most heavy metals from your body. But for optimal chelation therapy—getting rid of most of the toxic metals is just not good enough. That’s why Advanced Artery Solution™ also gives you optimum doses of malic acid—a powerful, complementary chelator that picks up where EDTA leaves off!

With malic acid, you can remove dangerous aluminum from your blood. Research shows aluminum can cause memory loss, brain decay and even unexplainable fatigue.

In one clinical test, fibromyalgia patients were given malic acid along with magnesium for eight weeks. All the patients reported significant reduction of muscular pain within 48 hours of starting the supplement!

For the #1 source of in-home, oral chelation—there’s nothing better than Advanced Artery Solution™! Now you can sample this heart supporting nutrient completely RISK FREE during this special introductory offer.

Try Advanced Artery Solution™ Risk-Free Today…
It’s Guaranteed to Work
or it’s FREE!

Plus Claim up to $502.65 in
Savings and Free Gifts Now

Can’t order online?

Call toll-free
1-800-746-4513

To receive this special web only offer, please reference savings code: TEC1434