Allele loss is a hallmark of chromosome regions harboring recessive oncogenes. Lung cancer frequently demonstrates loss of heterozygosity on 17p. Recent evidence suggests that the p53 gene located on 17p13 has many features of such an antioncogene. The p53 gene was frequently mutated or inactivated in all types of human lung cancer. The genetic abnormalities of p53 include gross changes such as homozygous deletions and abnormally sized messenger RNAs along with a variety of point or small mutations, which map to the p53 open reading frame and change amino acid sequence in a region highly conserved between mouse and man. In addition, very low or absent expression of p53 messenger RNA in lung cancer cell lines compared to normal lung was seen. These findings, coupled with the previous demonstration of 17p allele loss in lung cancer, strongly implicate p53 as an anti-oncogene whose disruption is involved in the pathogenesis of human lung cancer.

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The hematopoietic growth factor interleukin-3 (IL-3) promotes the proliferation and maturation of pluripotent myeloid progenitor cells. In the immune system, IL-3 is synthesized by mitogen or antigen- stimulated T lymphocytes. We demonstrate the expression of IL-3 mRNA in mouse brain by in situ hybridization histochemistry and Northern blot analysis. The IL-3 mRNA is localized in discrete areas of the brain and can be found in neuronal cell body and astrocytes. Northern analysis of cerebellar RNA, compared with mRNA extracted from WEHI-3 cells, showed a single hybridization band, approximately 1.2 kb, suggesting similar processing between brain and myeloid cells. The molecular evidence and previous observations of IL-3-like biologic activity found in the brain suggest a potential role for IL-3 in the neurobiology of the CNS.

C-myc protein expression in human T cells was specifically inhibited by a 15-mer deoxy-oligonucleotide complementary to the 5' end of the human c-myc gene second exon. The oligonucleotide penetrates the cells without any treatment, with a plateau of cell association reached in 2 h. The oligonucleotide specifically blocked the de novo synthesis of c-myc protein, induced by PHA in human resting peripheral T cells, without impairing the overall synthesis of other proteins, as shown by two-dimensional analysis of [35S]methionine pulse-labeled proteins. The specific inhibition of c-myc protein synthesis prevented the entry into S phase of resting T cells, induced to proliferate by PHA, or IL-2-dependent T cells induced by IL-2, as shown by [3H]thymidine incorporation. The inhibition of proliferation was specific since it was not observed with the corresponding sense-oligonucleotide and was reversed by preincubation of the cells with an excess of sense oligonucleotide. These results clearly support a role for c-myc protein in the proliferation process and show that inducible protein expression can be blocked by means of synthetic oligonucleotides complementary to a coding exon.