Asbestos »

[13 Feb 2011 | One Comment | 249 views] Read more >> 
NY Times on the Jeffrey Mine in Canada

Here is an article from the New York Times discussing the proposal to reopen the Jeffrey mine in Canada.
G. Bernard Coulombe, president of the Jeffrey mine in Asbestos (Quebec), argues that chrysotile asbestos mining should resume. The political strength of asbestos will be tested this month when the province is expected to announce a decision on the loan guarantee.
As you may know, iMig has taken a position against the re-opening of the mine and future sales in India, Pakistan and Vietnam.

Clinical Research »

[4 Feb 2011 | No Comment | 156 views] Read more >> 
Thymidylate synthase and excision repair-cross-complementing group-1 as predictors of responsiveness in mesothelioma patients treated with pemetrexed-carboplatin.

In this retrospective study by Italian and Dutch researchers, mesothelioma samples from 99 patients treated with carboplatin and pemetrexed were analysed for markers of clinical outcome.
A low level of protein expression of thymidylate synthase (TS), the major folate-dependent enzyme inhibited by pemetrexed, correlated with improved outcome: better disease control, longer progression free survival and longer overall survival. In contrast, the level of protein expression of ECRR1, an excision repair gene associated with platin resistance in some tumors, did not. This study is the first to show that …

Basic Research »

[28 Jan 2011 | No Comment | 96 views] Read more >> 
Inhibition of ERK 1/2 reduces mesothelioma resistance to doxorubicin

Here is a paper by Dr Shukla et al. addressing the role of the MAPK ERK 1/2 activity in mesothelioma resistance to doxorubicin.
Treatment of mesothelioma cells with doxorubicin phosphorylates and activates ERK1/2.  Mesothelioma cells are also shown here to upregulate key chemoresistance genes, regulated by ERK1/2, such as Bcl-2, cFos and BRCA1. Blockade of ERK 1/2 activity with the kinase inhibitor UO126 resulted in increase citotoxicity in combination with Doxorubicin. Moreover, UO126 significantly reduced the transcription levels of Bcl-2 and BRCA1, further supporting a role for ERK 1/2 activity in …

iMig conferences »

[22 Jan 2011 | No Comment | 206 views] Read more >> 
iMig 2010 Abstracts

Abstracts book from the 2010 iMig Kyoto conference.

The PDF file contains all the abstracts presented in Kyoto (114 pages).

You can search for specific topics by using the search function in your Acrobat Reader or by using CTRL+F (CMD+F on a Mac) in your web browser.