Sorry this took so long, but I have been a bit busy in the past few days…

I began my Polycomb repressor gene quest with this study: http://tinyurl.com/2vboddk, which examines the activity of the Polyhooligans in Hodgkin’s lymphoma cell lines. As you can see, the abstract is a bit on the technical side…This will give you an idea of the kind of stuff I have been reading lately…Okay, now for the relevant part of the full study…

As I mentioned in my July 19 post, the Polyhooligans are bad only when it comes to cancer cells. And, since it is their cancer cell goings-on that interest us, I will skip all the parts in the study concerning body formation, haematopoiesis and cell cycle control.

The full study tells us that a couple of the Hodgkin’s lymphoma cell lines were treated with curcumin and that a decrease in the level of MEL18 expression after curcumin exposure was […] observed in both lines. The cells also showed inactivation of NF-kappaB after being exposed to curcumin.

Another interesting excerpt: when TNF-alpha, a well-known activator of NF-kappaB, was added to these cell lines, the activity of MEL18 increased. These findings support the relationship between NF-kappaB activity and the expression of MEL18...I hope this part is clear enough, since I think it’s amazing. I mean, curcumin inhibited one of the Polyhooligans, the one called MEL18, which seems to be closely connected to NF-kappaB, our old nemesis (=small world, eh…). Fantastic!

Well, this is just the beginning…