Help us find the cures.

Despite significant advances in research, breast cancer is still the most common form of cancer, with 50,000 cases diagnosed and 12,000 dying of the disease each year in the UK. In October 2013, Breast Cancer Campaign published a Gap Analysis of breast cancer research that provides us with what we need to know about and what we now need to do to overcome - prevent, cure and outlive - breast cancer. In addition to highlighting the gaps in our understanding of breast cancer, the paper identifies five strategic solutions, which require a collaborative approach amongst researchers in academia and industry, funders, donors, policy-makers and parliamentarians, healthcare professionals and patients to achieve significant progress. Breast Cancer Campaign is calling for funding organizations to reverse the decline in resources targeted towards breast cancer research, an improved and collaborative infrastructure to support breast cancer research, multidisciplinary collaboration and improved clinical trial design. We hope that breast cancer can be overcome by 2050, but this can only be achieved through collaboration with others. The actions that will make a difference have been identified and we must act now.

Molecular markers for the assessment of postnatal male germ cell development in the mouse.

BACKGROUND: A proliferation marker, proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA), a Sertoli cell specific transcription factor, GATA-1 and the male germ cell specific, RNA binding motif (RBM), were used to identify different cellular populations during postnatal development of the mouse testis. METHODS: Immunohistochemistry, RT-PCR and real-time quantitative RT-PCR (QRT-PCR) were used. RESULTS: PCNA was expressed in pre-Sertoli and germ cells on the day of birth. Both pre-meiotic germ cells and spermatocytes expressed RBM throughout postnatal development. RBM-positive cell counts and QRT-PCR of RBM showed that average level of RBM per cell is highest in juvenile males between 14 and 21 days. From 42 days onward, there was a dramatic decrease in RBM expression in individual pre-meiotic and meiotic germ cells. CONCLUSIONS: These markers were used to correlate cell proliferative capability, gene expression profile and anatomic location within the developing mouse testis. The majority of germ cells start active proliferation once they have migrated to the basement membrane or immediately before. RBM is more highly expressed during the first wave of spermatogenesis versus subsequent waves, suggesting that there may be a change in the activity of RBM.

Future developments in assisted reproduction in humans.

The advent of human in vitro fertilization (IVF) over 30 years ago has made the oocyte and preimplantation embryo uniquely accessible. This accessibility has given rise to new micromanipulation techniques, such as intracytoplasmic sperm injection for treatment of male infertility, as well as embryo biopsy for preimplantation diagnosis of both genetic disease and aneuploidy, a major cause of early embryo demise and miscarriage. In the UK, average pregnancy rates after IVF and embryo transfer are < 25%, even after transfer of several embryos. Unfortunately, a third of these pregnancies involve multiple gestations. Research is currently focusing on methods to improve IVF success rates while reducing twin and triplet pregnancies and their associated increased morbidity and mortality. One approach is to develop screening methods to identify the most viable embryos, so that transfer of fewer healthy embryos will result in a higher proportion of singleton pregnancies. Screening methods include optimizing culture conditions for prolonged culture and selection of viable blastocysts for transfer, or embryo biopsy and aneuploidy screening. Assisted reproduction is also increasingly important in other branches of medicine: survival rates for cancer sufferers are improving continually and there is now a significant need for approaches to preserve fertility after sterilizing chemo-and radiotherapy treatment. Techniques for cryopreserving male and female gametes or gonadal tissue are being developed, although systems to grow and mature these gametes are in their infancy. Finally, there are also concerns regarding the safety of these new assisted reproductive technologies.