Reactive oxygen species (ROS) are important in regulating normal cellular processes whereas deregulated ROS leads to the development of a diseased state in humans including cancers. Several studies have been found to be marked with increased ROS production which activates pro-tumorigenic signaling, enhances cell survival and proliferation and drives DNA damage and genetic instability. However, higher ROS levels have been found to promote anti-tumorigenic signaling by initiating oxidative stress-induced tumor cell death. Tumor cells develop a mechanism where they adjust to the high ROS by expressing elevated levels of antioxidant proteins to detoxify them while maintaining pro-tumorigenic signaling and resistance to apoptosis. Therefore, ROS manipulation can be a potential target for cancer therapies as cancer cells present an altered redox balance in comparison to their normal counterparts. In this review, we aim to provide an overview of the generation and sources of ROS within tumor cells, ROS-associated signaling pathways, their regulation by antioxidant defense systems, as well as the effect of elevated ROS production in tumor progression. It will provide an insight into how pro- and anti-tumorigenic ROS signaling pathways could be manipulated during the treatment of cancer.

Oxidative Stress in Cancer Cell Metabolism.

https://www.omicsonline.org/2167-1168/2167-1168-S1.002-089.pdf

Active-learning strategies: The use of a game to reinforce learning in nursing education. A case study

Learning styles may be classified according to the sensory modality that one most prefers to use when internalizing information. The four major sensory modalities are visual, aural or auditory, rea...

Learning style preferences and course performance in an undergraduate physiology class

The inhibition of the DNA damage response (DDR) pathway in the treatment of cancer has recently gained interest, and different DDR inhibitors have been developed. Among them, the most promising ones target the WEE1 kinase family, which has a crucial role in cell cycle regulation and DNA damage identification and repair in both nonmalignant and cancer cells. This review recapitulates and discusses the most recent findings on the biological function of WEE1/PKMYT1 during the cell cycle and in the DNA damage repair, with a focus on their dual role as tumor suppressors in nonmalignant cells and pseudo-oncogenes in cancer cells. We here report the available data on the molecular and functional alterations of WEE1/PKMYT1 kinases in both hematological and solid tumors. Moreover, we summarize the preclinical information on 36 chemo/radiotherapy agents, and in particular their effect on cell cycle checkpoints and on the cellular WEE1/PKMYT1-dependent response. Finally, this review outlines the most important pre-clinical and clinical data available on the efficacy of WEE1/PKMYT1 inhibitors in monotherapy and in combination with chemo/radiotherapy agents or with other selective inhibitors currently used or under evaluation for the treatment of cancer patients.

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A WEE1 family business: regulation of mitosis, cancer progression, and therapeutic target

Students have learning style preferences that are often classified according to their visual (V), aural (A), read-write (R), and/or kinesthetic (K) sensory modality preferences (SMP). The purposes ...

https://www.physiology.org/doi/pdf/10.1152/advan.00078.2010

A comparison between learning style preferences and sex, status, and course performance.

Teaching mode efficiency and learning preferences of first year nursing students.

Daunorubicin is commonly used in the treatment of acute lymphoblastic leukaemia (ALL). The aim of this study was to explore the kinetics of double strand break (DSB) formation of three ALL cell lines following exposure to daunorubicin and to investigate the effects of daunorubicin on the cell cycle and the protein kinases involved in specific checkpoints following DNA damage and recovery periods. Three ALL cell lines CCRF-CEM and MOLT-4 derived from T lymphocytes and SUP-B15 derived from B lymphocytes were examined following 4 h treatment with daunorubicin chemotherapy and 4, 12 and 24 h recovery periods. Cell viability was measured via MTT (3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2–5 diphenyltetrazolium bromide) assay, reactive oxygen species (ROS) production by flow cytometry, double stranded DNA breaks by detecting γH2AX levels while stages of the cell cycle were detected following propidium iodide staining and flow cytometry. Western blotting was used to detect specific proteins while RNA was extracted from all cell lines and converted to cDNA to sequence Ataxia–telangiectasia mutated (ATM). Daunorubicin induced different degrees of toxicity in all cell lines and consistently generated reactive oxygen species. Daunorubicin was more potent at inducing DSB in MOLT-4 and CCRF-CEM cell lines while SUP-B15 cells showed delays in DSB repair and significantly more resistance to daunorubicin compared to the other cell lines as measured by γH2AX assay. Daunorubicin also causes cell cycle arrest in all three cell lines at different checkpoints at different times. These effects were not due to mutations in ATM as sequencing revealed none in any of the three cell lines. However, p53 was phosphorylated at serine 15 only in CCRF-CEM and MOLT-4 but not in SUP-B15 cells. The lack of active p53 may be correlated to the increase of SOD2 in SUP-B15 cells. The delay in DSB repair and lower sensitivity to daunorubicin seen in the B lymphocyte derived SUP-B15 cells could be due to loss of function of p53 that may be correlated to increased expression of SOD2 and lower ROS production.

/pdf/time-dependent-response-of-daunorubicin-on-cytotoxicity-cell-242sg5wrlq.pdf

Time dependent response of daunorubicin on cytotoxicity, cell cycle and DNA repair in acute lymphoblastic leukaemia

Evidence shows that factors contributing to success in physiology education for allied health students at universities include not only their high school achievement and background but also factors such as confidence with their teachers and quality of their learning experience, justifying intensive and continued survey of students' perceptions of their learning experience. Here we report data covering a 3-yr period in a physiology subject that has been redesigned for blended and online presentation. Consistent with previous reports, we show that when we undertook a blended mode of delivery, students demonstrated better grades than traditional modes of teaching; however the absence of didactic teaching in this subject resulted in lower grades overall. Students have very strong positive attitudes to weekly quizzes (80% positive approval) but report ambivalent attitudes to online self-directed learning (61% negative perception), even though they had 2-h weekly facilitated workshops. Overwhelmingly, students who undertook the subject in a self-directed online learning mode requested more face-to-face-teaching (70% of comments). From these data, we suggest that there is a quantifiable benefit to didactic teaching in the blended teaching mode that is not reproduced in online self-directed learning, even when face-to-face guided inquiry-based learning is embedded in the subject.

/pdf/student-perceptions-and-learning-outcomes-of-blended-346bi13dpe.pdf

Student perceptions and learning outcomes of blended learning in a massive first-year core physiology for allied health subjects

The experience of general nurses in rural Australian emergency departments

Objective: To validate earlier findings that lack of access to health services is the most likely issue of complaint by rural consumers, and that lack of knowledge about how to make effective complaints and scepticism that responses to complaints bring about service improvement account for the under-representation of complaints from rural consumers. Design: Unaddressed reply-paid mail survey to 100% of households in small communities, and 50%, 20% or 10% in progressively larger communities. Setting: Eight communities in the Loddon-Mallee region of Victoria. Participants: 983 householders most responsible for the health care of household members, responding to a mailed questionnaire. Main outcome measures: Issues of complaints actually made; issues of unsatisfactory situations when a complaint was not made; reasons for not complaining; to whom complaints are made; and plans for dealing with any future complaint. Results: Earlier findings were confirmed. Lack of access to health services was the most important issue, indicated by 54.8% of those who had made a complaint, and 72% of those who wanted to but did not. The most common reason given for not complaining was that it was futile to do so. Lack of knowledge of how to make effective complaints which might contribute to the quality assurance cycle was evident. Conclusions: Rural consumers? disaffection with health complaints as a means to quality improvement poses a significant barrier to consumer engagement in quality assurance processes. Provider practices may need to change to regain community confidence in quality improvement processes. CONSUMER VIEWS ABOUT the quality of health services provide a valuable source of information to those concerned with accountability and quality assurance in service provision.1,2 When such views are expressed as complaints which are responded to in ways which focus on quality improvement rather than allocation of blame, opportunities may arise to improve the quality of health services for all consumers.3,4

/pdf/there-s-no-point-in-complaining-nothing-changes-rural-3d5sduqdqa.pdf

Terri Meehan-Andrews

Papers

Teaching mode efficiency and learning preferences of first year nursing students.

Time dependent response of daunorubicin on cytotoxicity, cell cycle and DNA repair in acute lymphoblastic leukaemia

Student perceptions and learning outcomes of blended learning in a massive first-year core physiology for allied health subjects

The experience of general nurses in rural Australian emergency departments

"There's no point in complaining, nothing changes": rural disaffection with complaints as an improvement method