Sorry for the delay in replying ... busy here.

How different is the androgen receptor protein in the male prostate different than a similiar protein in a female that has an estrogen receptor? I ask this because there are several well known treatments for post-menopausal women to prevent breast cancer (Tamoxifen, Arimidex, Aromasin) however I do not know of any medications treating older males that are at risk for developing prostate cancer?

Actually AR and ER proteins are evolutionarily related, and *very* similar in structure and function. As you correctly imply, what works for breast cancer should work for prostate cancer, because the proteins are so similar. Currently, the main treatments of prostate cancer include surgery (to remove the tumour), radiotherapy (to blast the tumour) and hormone therapy (to deprive the tumour of the signals it needs to grow). Hormone therapy in prostate cancer includes a variety of drugs that target different parts of the testosterone pathway, including LHRH antagonists (which are upstream of the testosterone synthesis pathway), steroidal anti-androgen hormone therapy, and non-steroidal anti-androgens. This is similar to anti-estrogen drugs.

The problem with hormone therapy is that the tumour often becomes resistant to it. So it is usually very successful as a first line of treatment, but if/when the cancer recurs, the tumour is unresponsive to a second treatment of hormone therapy. Also, because of the side effects of hormone therapy, it is only used as a treatment for prostate cancer after diagnosis, never as a preventative for someone who isn't already sick.

The tie-in to diabetes (since this is the diabetes thread), is that type II diabetes involved PPAR-gamma, another close relative of ER and AR, and similar anti-PPARgamma therapies may be possible for this disease, analogous to anti-androgen and anti-estrogen therapies for cancer.

I hope that answers your question, if not feel free to ask again.

Cheers,
V.

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http://www.find-a-drug.biz/proteome.htm lists the proteome test jobs FaD has done, the links to the right lead to their score stats. Search for "diabet" on that page (not "diabetes") to find the related targets.

@BennyRop (if you're still reading this thread) : Malaria had a collaborator too (E. Merck) but they didn't want the individual results to be published, that's why there are no success certificates for those. They received a large amount of results just at the end of FaD, I doubt that they are even near done with testing the best ones.

Vanita,

Thank you for your answer! I have been a little busy as well with summer school and work but I definitely will do an in depth literature search (with the time I have) on the gene sequence PPAR-gamma because it peaks my interest. Just like you said, evidence thus far shows that it prevents colon cancer as well as improves insulin sensitivity. I would like to do more reasearch but please stay tuned. I will definitely have a few more questions....As always, thank you for your time!

Alex

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While you're on the topic of cancer, I happened to see this news Friday:
Merck's cervical cancer vaccine gets EU's nod
...thought it may be of interest to many.

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Running Microsoft's "System Idle Process" will never help cure cancer, AIDS nor Alzheimer's. But running Rosetta@home just might!
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While you're on the topic of cancer, I happened to see this news Friday:
Merck's cervical cancer vaccine gets EU's nod

Yeah! This is an exciting development! And if I'm not mistaken, much of the work to develop this vaccine was done right here in Seattle!

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This might be interesting for you then : http://protonmedia3d.com/mvt.html

Merck has a virtual 3D training center based on the ActiveWorlds 3D chat system, I found it by chance (*cough*) a few months back. If they didn't change anything, it should run on port 5687 of the ActiveWorlds main server or of the protonmedia3d server (I forgot which server it was).

p.s.: when I visited it, it required ActiveWorld clients between 3.2 and 3.4 and allowed "tourist" access, i.e. no signup needed. The server itself must still be running as they have VR "teleports" on that page