A mini-symposium was held in Montreal, Canada, at the International Surgical Week for the Breast Surgical International in 2007 addressing the question whether breast cancer is the same disease in Asian and Western countries. Numerous investigators from Asian and Western countries presented the epidemiologic and clinical outcome data of women with breast cancer. Although there are significant similarities, the striking difference is that the peak age for breast cancer is between 40 and 50 years in the Asian countries, whereas the peak age in the Western countries is between 60 and 70 years. Also, the incidence of breast cancer in Asia is rising and is associated with increased mortality. In the West, although the incidence is increasing, the mortality rate is definitely decreasing. Future prospective data collection from Asian and Western countries may provide further interesting epidemiologic and outcome data regarding the outcome of women with breast cancer from Asian and Western countries.BackgroundWhether breast cancer is the same disease in Asian and Western countries was the topic of a 2007 Breast Surgery International symposium at International Surgical Week.MethodsParticipating investigators from China, Taiwan, India, Japan, South Korea, Sweden, Canada, and the United States were asked beforehand to provide data on the epidemiology and treatment outcome of women in their countries.ResultsComparisons of the epidemiologic and clinical outcome data of women with breast cancer showed significant similarities, but the striking difference is that the peak age is between 40 and 50 years in Asian countries, but is between 60 and 70 years in Western countries. The incidence of breast cancer in Asia is rising and is associated with increased mortality. In the West, although the incidence is also increasing, the mortality rate is definitely decreasing.DiscussionFuture prospective data collection from Asian and Western countries may provide further interesting epidemiologic and outcome data regarding the outcome of women with breast cancer from Asian and Western countries.

Determining the growth patterns of single cells offers answers to some of the most elusive questions in contemporary cell biology: how cell growth is regulated and how cell size distributions are maintained. For example, a linear growth in time implies that there is no regulation required to maintain homeostasis; an exponential pattern indicates the opposite. Recently, there has been great effort to measure single cells using microelectromechanical systems technology, and several important questions have been explored. However, a unified, easy-to-use methodology to measure the growth rate of individual adherent cells of various sizes has been lacking. Here we demonstrate that a newly developed optical interferometric technique, known as spatial light interference microscopy, can measure the cell dry mass of many individual adherent cells in various conditions, over spatial scales from micrometers to millimeters, temporal scales ranging from seconds to days, and cell types ranging from bacteria to mammalian cells. We found evidence of exponential growth in Escherichia coli, which agrees very well with other recent reports. Perhaps most importantly, combining spatial light interference microscopy with fluorescence imaging provides a unique method for studying cell cycle-dependent growth. Thus, by using a fluorescent reporter for the S phase, we measured single cell growth over each phase of the cell cycle in human osteosarcoma U2OS cells and found that the G2 phase exhibits the highest growth rate, which is massdependent and can be approximated by an exponential.quantitative phase imaging | population growth | adherent cell mass | label free imaging

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In our study, we present experimental evidence suggesting that curcumin exerts multiple different suppressive effects on human breast carcinoma cells in vitro. Our experiments demonstrate that curcumin's antiproliferative effects are estrogen dependent in ER (estrogen receptor)-positive MCF-7 cells, being more pronounced in estrogen-containing media and in the presence of exogenous 17-␤ estradiol. Curcumin inhibits the expression of ER downstream genes including pS2 and TGF-␤ (transforming growth factor) in ER-positive MCF-7 cells, and this inhibition is also dependent on the presence of estrogen. Curcumin also decreases ERE (estrogen responsive element)-CAT activities induced by 17-␤ estradiol. In addition, we demonstrate that curcumin exerts strong antiinvasive effects in vitro that are not estrogen dependent in the ER-negative MDA-MB-231 breast cancer cells. These antiinvasive effects appear to be mediated through the downregulation of MMP-2 (matrix metalloproteinase) and the upregulation of TIMP-1 (tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase), 2 common effector molecules that have been implicated in regulating tumor cell invasion. Our study also demonstrates that curcumin inhibits the transcript levels of 2 major angiogenesis factors VEGF (vascular endothelial growth factor) and b-FGF (basic fibroblast growth factor) mainly in ER-negative MDA-MB-231 cells. © 2002 Wiley-Liss, Inc. Key words: curcumin; chemoprevention; breast cancer; angiogenesis; estrogenBreast cancer chemoprevention is the subject of substantial research efforts to improve the health of women in the United States. Epidemiologic surveys suggest that diet has an impact on cancer incidence. Frequent consumption of vegetables and fruits decreases the risk for human cancer. 1,2 Although risk reduction by nutritional intervention alone may not be sufficient to protect high-risk individuals against cancer development, it would be very useful to identify agents with chemopreventive potency and to evaluate them in combination with nutritional intervention. 3,4 Recently, attention has been focused on identifying dietary phytochemicals that have the ability to inhibit the processes of carcinogenesis. Extracts of plants or their fractionated ingredients are found to possess inhibitory effects against chemically induced carcinogenesis. 5 Curcumin is a major component of turmeric, the dried rhizome of Curcuma longa L., which is commonly used as a yellow coloring and flavoring agent in food items in Asian countries. Commercial-grade curcumin has shown anticarcinogenic activity in animals as indicated by the ability to block colon tumor initiation induced by azoxymethans 6 and skin tumor promotion induced by phorbol ester. 7 Curcumin also has been reported to possess antiinflammatory activity and is a potent inhibitor of reactive oxygen-generating enzymes such as lipooxygenase/cyclooxygenase, 8,9 xanthine dehydroxygenase/oxidase 10 and nitric oxide synthase (NOS). 11,12 Recently, it has been shown that the administration of synthetic curcumin in the diet during t...

is a promising industrial microorganism as well as a major human pathogen. The recent emergence of carbapenem-resistant has posed a serious threat to public health worldwide, emphasizing a dire need for novel therapeutic means against drug-resistant Despite the critical importance of genetics in bioengineering, physiology studies, and therapeutic-means development, genome editing, in particular, the highly desirable scarless genetic manipulation in , is often time-consuming and laborious. Here, we report a two-plasmid system, pCasKP-pSGKP, used for precise and iterative genome editing in By harnessing the clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat (CRISPR)-Cas9 genome cleavage system and the lambda Red recombination system, pCasKP-pSGKP enabled highly efficient genome editing in using a short repair template. Moreover, we developed a cytidine base-editing system, pBECKP, for precise C→T conversion in both the chromosomal and plasmid-borne genes by engineering the fusion of the cytidine deaminase APOBEC1 and a Cas9 nickase. By using both the pCasKP-pSGKP and the pBECKP tools, the gene was confirmed to be the major factor that contributed to the carbapenem resistance of a hypermucoviscous carbapenem-resistant strain. The development of the two editing tools will significantly facilitate the genetic engineering of Genetics is a key means to study bacterial physiology. However, the highly desirable scarless genetic manipulation is often time-consuming and laborious for the major human pathogen We developed a CRISPR-Cas9-mediated genome-editing method and a cytidine base-editing system, enabling rapid, highly efficient, and iterative genome editing in both industrial and clinically isolated strains. We applied both tools in dissecting the drug resistance mechanism of a hypermucoviscous carbapenem-resistant strain, elucidating that the gene was the major factor that contributed to the carbapenem resistance of the hypermucoviscous carbapenem-resistant strain. Utilization of the two tools will dramatically accelerate a wide variety of investigations in diverse strains and relevant species, such as gene characterization, drug discovery, and metabolic engineering.