Although airway inflammation continues after cessation and emphysema still progresses, fur ther investigation is needed to understand this. Conclusions CS activated p38 MAPK only in a mouse strain that was susceptible to CS induced emphysema, and its selective inhibition ameliorated lung inflammation and injury in a murine model of CS exposure. These results demon strate meantime the significance of p38 MAPK activation in COPD pathogenesis, and might establish a basis for using MAPK pathways as a new molecular target for the treat ment of COPD. Background Bladder cancer is the fourth most commonly diagnosed cancer in the United States with over 60,000 new cases per year. Fortunately, the majority of these cancers are superficial and successfully treated surgically.
Unfor tunately, these patients require intense follow up due to high recurrence rates and the potential for progression to invasive cancer. Cystoscopy is recommended at regu lar intervals and even the lowest risk patients have a 30% recurrence rate at 5 years. This constant need for surveillance imposes economic and life style hard ship. An effective therapy to decrease bladder cancer recurrence could have significant impact on both quality of life and survival for over 500,000 patients with a his tory of bladder cancer in the United States alone. Post translational histone modifications such as acetyl ation are associated with transcriptionally active regions of the genome. Histone deacetylation appears to be a mechanism whereby cancers decrease expression of genes involved in cell cycle control and apoptosis.
His tone deacetylase inhibitors are an emerging class of cancer drugs that might be useful in preventing bladder cancer recurrence. Valproic acid is a relatively weak HDACi but has demonstrated potential in the treatment of glioblastomas, thyroid cancer, and leukemia. There are several on going clinical trials of valproate for the treatment of other cancers registered on ClinicalTrials. gov. Extensve clinical experience with valproate as a seizure medica tion demonstrates that it is generally a well tolerated drug that can be administered for long periods. For these reasons valproate is an attractive candidate for the prevention of bladder cancer recurrence. Anti neoplastic properties of valproate in bladder can cer models have recently been reported by several groups.
Valproate decreased proliferation of TCC SUP, T24, RT4, and HT1376 cell lines. increased histone H3 acetylation and p21 expression and activated caspase 2 and caspase 3 in T24 cells. In addition, in vitro invasiveness was decreased in valproate treated T24, TCC SUP, Brefeldin_A and HT1376 cells. This is not restricted to in vitro studies T24 xenografts had reduced growth with chronic administration of valproate in male athymic nu nu mice. Similar results were reported by Byun et al. for TCC SUP and 5637 cell lines.