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Caduceus
Newsletter: Fall 2010.03, Week of
Sept. 6
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Ya know, with a mascot like
this, we have to celebrate International Talk Like a Pirate Day,
September 19!
For more information about International Talk Like a Pirate Day,
please go to Marginalia. |
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Table of
Contents: 1. Events coming up. (This feature is updated as I get new
information.) |
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1. Events coming
up. (This feature is updated as I
get new information.) |
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· Sunday, September 19: International Talk Like a Pirate Day. For more information, go to http://www.talklikeapirate.com . · Wednesday, November 10, 5:30 to 6:30 p.m.: Introduction to Ross University’s School of Veterinary Medicine and School of Medicine. Montesi Room of Buckman Hall; · Thursday, November 11, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.: Annual Health Career Opportunities Fair, Sabbatini Lounge. The event is anchored by the University of Tennessee Health Science Center, and other clinical health-related graduate programs and scholarship programs will be represented. · Thursday, November 11, 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.: Introduction to West Virginia College of Osteopathic Medicine, J-10. |
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2. ===AAMC
STAT===, e-newsletter from the Association of American Medical Colleges,
August 30, 2010 edition. |
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3. Potential
cancer drug arises from sponges:
From the R+D Daily, August 30, 2010 edition. |
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Potential cancer drug arises from spongesMonday, August 30, 2010
Deep in the ocean, sponges of the Agelas family, or bacteria living within the sponges, emit chemicals believed to help them defend their territory. Those chemicals, called agelastatins, have also shown the ability to kill cancer cells. For that reason, chemists have been trying to find ways to synthesize agelastatins in the laboratory since the chemicals were discovered in 1993. Chemists at MIT, led by Associate Professor Mohammad Movassaghi, recently discovered the shortest and most productive way to synthesize all six of the known agelastatins. The team, which also includes graduate students Dustin Siegel and Sunkyu Han, described the new method in Chemical Science. “Movassaghi's very elegant synthesis demonstrates a nicely scalable, multi-gram preparation of all the known agelastatins,” says Tadeusz Molinski, the chemist who first isolated agelastatins C and D, the third and fourth agelastatins discovered, in 1998. Molinski, a professor of chemistry at the University of California at San Diego, says the new synthesis will allow researchers to produce enough of the compounds to test them as cancer drugs. Agelastatins have been shown to inhibit cancer-cell proliferation by interfering with cell division. They also repress an enzyme known as glycogen synthase kinase-3, a potential target for treating Alzheimer’s disease and bipolar disorder. “They have a very broad range of biological activity,” says Movassaghi. “The sponges are not interested in treating cancer or Alzheimer’s, but the agelastatins are potently active against them.” Scientists speculate that sponges, or bacteria that live in symbiosis with them, release agelastatins into their watery environment to warn other sponge species not to colonize the area. Copying nature
The reaction begins with a commonly available starting material, aspartic acid. The synthesis requires seven steps to produce agelastatin A, the first discovered and most potent of the compounds. Agelastatin A can then be converted to agelastatins B, C, or E. The synthesis can also be altered slightly to produce D, which can then be converted to F. In designing their synthesis, Movassaghi, Siegel and Han tried to mimic the way they believe the sponges naturally produce agelastatins. Each agelastatin contains four rings, known as A, B, C, and D, and most chemists have used syntheses in which the C ring forms before the B ring. The MIT team formed the B ring first, and the C ring last. The C ring is the only ring made solely of carbon atoms (all of the others contain at least one nitrogen atom), and it is where all four of the molecule’s stereocenters are found. (Stereocenters are atoms around which the molecule can take different three-dimensional orientations.) Other chemists had theorized that the biological synthesis of agelastatins would use precursors with an electron-deficient carbon atom in the fourth carbon position and a carbon atom that wants to share its electrons in the eighth position. Movassaghi switched those features. To show whether sponges do the same series of steps, more experiments are needed. Researchers could label the precursors with isotope tags, give them to the sponges, and follow where the isotopic labels end up. Although some of the steps of Movassaghi’s synthesis require high temperatures or acidic conditions, those same reactions could occur under biological conditions if catalyzed by enzymes. Movassaghi’s lab is now collaborating with researchers in academia and industry to test the biological activity of the compounds, with an emphasis on their anti-cancer activity. Using the new synthesis, the researchers should be able to easily produce variants not found in nature that might have even more powerful effects, says Movassaghi. The synthesis should also provide a good starting point for possible future large-scale production, should there be a need, he says. |
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4. The
Association of Schools of Public Health is sponsoring a Visit Day on
November 10, 2010 in Denver Colorado.
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Students: Here is a wonderful opportunity for you to
get a lot of information on public health careers and educational
opportunities and discover the world of public health. Here you will
have an opportunity to engage all the member schools of the Association of
Schools of Public Health. You will need to register for this free
event. Please see the link to the registration page: http://www.asph.org/document.cfm?page=1011 And
here is a link to the Friday letter article about visit day:
http://fridayletter.asph.org/article_view.cfm?FLE_Index=13610&FL_Index=1636
Warm regards, Bill
Harvey, NAAHP Liaison to the Association of Schools of Public Health
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5. Marginalia: Ahoy, me hearties! ‘Tis time to plan for this year’s International Talk Like a Pirate Day,
September 19! |
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What?!!? You’ve never heard of International Talk
Like a Pirate Day? From the home page, http://www.talklikeapirate.com/piratehome.html Welcome to the one and only,
official, accept-no-substitutes Talk Like A Pirate Day Web site. In the eight years since Dave Barry
mentioned us in his nationally syndicated newspaper column, what once was a
goofy idea celebrated by a handful of friends has turned into an
international phenomenon that shows no sign of letting up. Maybe you read
about us on line.. Maybe you caught one of our radio or TV interviews. Or
maybe you just stumbled on to our site while googling around for sites your
mother probably wouldn't approve of. Or perhaps you're one of the millions of
people from South Africa to the South Pole, from New York to the Pacific
Northwest, who've made it your own personal excuse to party like pirates
every September 19th
(and sometimes for days before and after)! However you got here, stick around
an' learn all about September 19 - International Talk Like A Pirate Day! Here are the creators of International Talk Like a Pirate Day, Mark "Cap'n Slappy" Summers and John "Ol' Chumbucket" Baur
They even have a Facebook page!: http://www.facebook.com/InternationalTalkLikeAPirateDay Oh, did you say that you want to see pictures of previous ITLAPD
celebrations?: Respectfully yours, Seafarin’ Stan
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Dr. Stan Eisen,
650
E-mail: seisen@cbu.edu
http://www.cbu.edu/~seisen/
Caduceus Newsletter Archives: http://www.cbu.edu/~seisen/Caduceus.html