| Popis: |
Recent advances in the cell biology of human neoplastic diseases indicate the clinical importance of host defense mechanisms. These include specific activity by T and B lymphocytes, monocytes, macrophages, eosinophiles and fibroblasts directed against antigens on the surface of autochthonous neoplastic cells. These tumor-associated antigens are increasingly being recognized as the phenotypic expression of derepressed normal fetal genes. Such derepression of normal fetal genes is equally a feature of viral or chemical oncogenesis in animal neoplasms. Interestingly enough, gene derepression also is involved in the normal activation of immune lymphocytes and, thus, directed gene derepression may play an important role in the therapy as well as in the pathogenesis and diagnosis of neoplastic diseases. Gene derepression without gene alteration also raises the possibility of reversion from the neoplastic state to normal phenotypic gene expression within neoplastic cells. By means of a re-imposition of the normal repressed state for such oncolonic genes. [Nature New Biology 236; 175–176 (1972)]. |
