Third world diseases

Asthma
Cystic fibrosis
Huntington’s disease
Sickle cell anemia
Malaria
Tuberculosis
Typhoid
HIV/AIDS
SARS

The HP virus

After breast cancer, cervical cancer kills more women each year than any other cancer
It is particularly so in developing countries, where screening is not widespread
Lasting infection from certain strains of a common sexually transmitted virus – human papilloma virus (HPV) – causes almost all cervical cancers
HPV was first linked to cervical cancer in 1983
Infection most in women of age group 16-23 years

AIDS tests have a flaw?…

The ELISA and Western Blot tests look for
the antibodies to HIV in blood
samples
But these antibodies are also found in samples
of patients whose immune systems have been
activated by several other conditions – like
tuberculosis, multiple sclerosis and even
warts
These two tests actually look for the p24 protein
which is found in healthy persons
also

Canadian team sequencing SARS virus

Scientists from the Genome Science Centre
at the British Columbia Cancer Agency are
sequencing the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome
(SARS) virus
30 genome researchers from 11 countries are involved
in the project
Early identification using electron microscopy,
PCR and viral microarray have identified the SARS
virus as a corona virus

DNA repair

Using yeast genome, scientists discovered the fundamental mechanism cells use to control how and when they divide
This has enlightened everyone about cell division and DNA repair, processes that are important in cancer diagnosis and control
One of the findings is that the common chemotherapeutic drug ‘cisplatin’ is particularly effective in killing cancer cells that have s specific defect in their ability to repair their DNA

The p53 protein

One of the fly genes with a human counter part is p53,
a so-called tumor suppressor gene that when mutated allows
cells to become cancerous
The p53 gene is part of a molecular pathway that
causes cells that have suffered irreparable genetic damage
to commit suicide
It was identified that just as in human cells, fly cells
in which the p53 protein is rendered inactive, lose the ability
to self-destruct after they sustain genetic damage and instead
grow uncontrollably

Some noted works

Golub, Slonim et al (1999) published a paper on
molecular classification of cancer.
This relates to their study of class discovery
and class prediction by gene expression monitoring

Slonim, Tamayo et al (2000) subsequently studied
class prediction and discovery using gene expression
data

Ramaswamy et al (2001) brought out multiclass
cancer diagnosis using tumor gene expression
signature

smaller sets are preferred for processing…

Large samples of over 200 genes are not helpful
since if all of them are correlated with a particular
class, it is unlikely that they all represent
different biological mechanisms and hence are
unlikely to add information not already provided
by others
Though excellent research work has been carried out
in last three decades, there are no general approach
for identifying new cancer classes (class discovery)
or for assigning tumors to known classes
(class prediction)

Foundations - Bioinformatics and disease link

Gene expression data analysis could give important
clues for reasons behind cause of various diseases,
especially about the behaviour and growth of disease
causing germs

Communicable diseases – malaria,
typhoid, cholera

HIV/AIDS

Cancer

Dengue

Medical informatics

Part 1 – Foundations
Part 2 – Cancer
Part 3 – Detailed Look into Cancers
Part 4 – Response of Cancers to Chemotherapy