Oncogenes and Molecular Genetics of Urological Tumours [antikvár]

Progress in molecular biology can be likened to that seen in aeronautics. In a man's single lifetime, aeronautics has seen the development of manned space travel from his initial flight at Kitty Hawk. Similarly, in molecular biology progress has been prodigious since James Watson and Francis Crick determined the double helical structure of DNA in 1953. Most of the molecular techniques employed by laboratories throughout the world have an even shorter history. Paul Berg, at Stanford University, perfected the process of DNA recombination in 1972. Stanley Cohen, also at Stanford, demonstrated the feasibility of gene cloning in 1974. Walter Gilbert and Fred Sanger, of Harvard and Cambridge Universities, respectively, shared the credit for sequencing genes in 1975. In 1977, the first humán protein (growth hormoné) was produced by recombinant technology. In 1980, Dávid Botstein described the technique of restriction fragment length polymorphism as a means of locating the site of a gene on a chromosome. In 1982 Richárd Palmiter and Ralph Brinster demonstrated the feasibility of transgenic technology, creating mice with extra copies of the somatastatin gene. Progress in the field of molecular biology has developed to the point that in 1990 the world's first gene therapy was introduced. In a young girl suffering from adenosine deaminase (ADA) deficiency the girl's immuné cells were extracted from her blood, transfected with copies of the gene encoding ADA, expanded in tissue culture and reinfused into the child, with the result that her immuné system remains intact today. Similarly, Steven Rosenberg at the National Cancer Institute in the United States has begun a humán experimentation in cancer, wherein cancer cells transfected with the gene that encodes tumor necrosis factor are reinjected into the host, with the hope that the patient's own immuné system will be activated against the host's cancer. It is, therefore, appropriate that the Société Internationale d'Urologie (SIU) sponsored a program on the molecular genetics of urological cancers at its 1991 conference. It is further appropriate that the SIU has chosen to select the subject for the preparation of this monograph. With the rather astonishing developments in molecular biology, as applied specifically to urological cancers, this monograph attempts to review the progress in this