Abstract:
:The incidence of brain tumors is rising in children and the elderly, but little is known about the mechanisms underlying brain tumor initiation and progression. In the 1940s, Zimmerman and coworkers exploited the tumor-promoting potential of polycyclic hydrocarbons to produce brain tumor models in adult mice that simulated the neuropathology of human brain tumors. Based on these early findings and on recent neurobiological studies of stem cells, I propose that crystalline carcinogenic pellets surgically implanted in the central nervous system establish over time a microenvironment that fosters proliferation and genetic damage in neural stem cells and their progenitors. Moreover, activated glia (microglia and astrocytes) and recruited macrophages mediate these processes. Gradually local tissue fields, which normally restrict stem cell proliferation, become disorganized, leading to further stem cell proliferation, genetic damage, and eventual neoplasia. Depending on age, location, and the state of glial/macrophage activation, the resulting brain tumor may resemble transformed neural progenitors aborted in more or less differentiated states. This hypothesis integrates the general mechanisms by which neural stem cells, glia, and macrophages orchestrate the initiation and progression of brain cancer. Also discussed are implications of these concepts for the diagnosis and therapy of human brain tumors.
journal_name
Perspect Biol Medjournal_title
Perspectives in biology and medicineauthors
Seyfried TNdoi
10.1353/pbm.2001.0035subject
Has Abstractpub_date
2001-04-01 00:00:00pages
263-82issue
2eissn
0031-5982issn
1529-8795journal_volume
44pub_type
杂志文章abstract::Fifty years after Beecher's landmark article, an old question is being debated anew: is it ethical to conduct clinical research without consent? This paper provides a systematic analysis of this question. First, it describes five clinical trials that have either been conducted (or proposed) without the subjects provid...
journal_title:Perspectives in biology and medicine
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1353/pbm.2016.0023
更新日期:2016-01-01 00:00:00
abstract::How will developments in genetic knowledge affect the classification of disease? Leaders in genetics have suggested that knowledge of the role of genes in disease can determine nosology. Diseases might be defined by genotype, thus avoiding the limitations of more empirical approaches to categorization. Other commentat...
journal_title:Perspectives in biology and medicine
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1353/pbm.2006.0012
更新日期:2006-01-01 00:00:00
abstract::This is a daunting time, not only in terms of our public health and our economic health but also in terms of the health of the republic. It is an old theme that any form of popular government needs virtuous citizens if it is to survive. It also needs citizens to agree on what counts as a virtue. I fear that the pandem...
journal_title:Perspectives in biology and medicine
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1353/pbm.2020.0050
更新日期:2020-01-01 00:00:00
abstract::The impact of chronic illness on patients has been discussed extensively, but little attention has been paid to the reverse situation: the need for patients who have been chronically ill since childhood to adjust to health and normality in adulthood. Drawing upon the narratives of two adults with childhood onset disea...
journal_title:Perspectives in biology and medicine
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1353/pbm.2005.0061
更新日期:2005-04-01 00:00:00
abstract::During the 1970s, something deeply consequential happened in the cultural, economic, and social relationships between science and technology. Paul Forman has proposed that the abrupt reversal of the culturally ascribed primacy in the science-technology relationship circa 1980 be taken as a demarcation of postmodernity...
journal_title:Perspectives in biology and medicine
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1353/pbm.0.0074
更新日期:2009-01-01 00:00:00
abstract::While the necessity of normalizing surgery on intersexed individuals is a topic of ongoing debate in the 21st century, the origins of surgery as a therapeutic practice for ambiguous or unusual genitalia lie in the 19th century. The first report of corrective surgery published in the United States appeared in the Ameri...
journal_title:Perspectives in biology and medicine
pub_type: 历史文章,杂志文章
doi:10.1353/pbm.2005.0012
更新日期:2005-01-01 00:00:00
abstract::Milton Winternitz led Yale Medical School as its Dean from 1920 to 1935. An innovative, even maverick leader, he not only kept the school from going under, but turned it into a first-class research institution. Dedicated to the new scientific medicine established in Germany, he was equally fervent about "social medici...
journal_title:Perspectives in biology and medicine
pub_type: 传,历史文章,杂志文章
doi:10.1353/pbm.2003.0046
更新日期:2003-07-01 00:00:00
abstract::Although the practice of medicine continually changes in response to new biomedical understanding, novel technologies, and evolving cultural contexts, the ethical foundations of the clinical relationship between patient and physician paradoxically remain constant. There are fundamental characteristics with respect to ...
journal_title:Perspectives in biology and medicine
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1353/pbm.2012.0002
更新日期:2012-01-01 00:00:00
abstract::This article describes the origins and drafting of the Belmont Report by members of the National Commission for the Protection of Human Subjects of Biomedical and Behavioral Research. ...
journal_title:Perspectives in biology and medicine
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1353/pbm.2020.0016
更新日期:2020-01-01 00:00:00
abstract::Ensuring experimental outcomes are of the highest clinical caliber is crucial prior to the introduction of germline genome editing. However, if we are to police scientific progress using probability or the potential to go wrong, then we must account for the specious standards of human reproduction. With 15% of clinica...
journal_title:Perspectives in biology and medicine
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1353/pbm.2020.0008
更新日期:2020-01-01 00:00:00
abstract::How we discovered that sea birds on the Great Barrier Reef are riddled with influenza viruses, and how one of these led to a new drug now being used in the battle against the flu. ...
journal_title:Perspectives in biology and medicine
pub_type: 历史文章,杂志文章
doi:10.1353/pbm.2004.0066
更新日期:2004-10-01 00:00:00
abstract::In this essay we link the rationale for the medical humanities with radical hermeneutics, a move that infuses the medical humanities with incredulity and suspicion. This orientation is particularly important at this historical moment, when the evidence-based and competency blanket is threatening to overpower all aspec...
journal_title:Perspectives in biology and medicine
pub_type: 历史文章,杂志文章
doi:10.1353/pbm.2007.0040
更新日期:2007-07-01 00:00:00
abstract::The emerging field of synthetic biology is a novel biological discipline at the interface between traditional biology, chemistry, and engineering sciences. Synthetic biology aims at the rational design of complex synthetic biological devices and systems with desired properties by combining compatible, modular biologic...
journal_title:Perspectives in biology and medicine
pub_type: 杂志文章,评审
doi:10.1353/pbm.2012.0042
更新日期:2012-01-01 00:00:00
abstract::In 1900 William Osler established a friendship with Harvey Cushing that encompassed the personal and professional aspects of their lives for over two decades. Their shared participation in the covenant of medicine shaped an intense friendship and mentoring relationship that profited both individuals immeasurably. The ...
journal_title:Perspectives in biology and medicine
pub_type: 传,历史文章,杂志文章
doi:10.1353/pbm.2005.0087
更新日期:2005-10-01 00:00:00
abstract::The organism, like the molecule, the cell, and the species, is one of the fundamental levels in our hierarchical classification of life and its components. The units ranked at these levels, being concrete, particular things, are individuals in the broadest philosophical sense. But in a much narrower and more familiar ...
journal_title:Perspectives in biology and medicine
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1353/pbm.2011.0022
更新日期:2011-04-01 00:00:00
abstract::The concept and determination of death by neurological or cardio-circulatory criteria play a crucial role for medical practice, society, and the law. Academic debates on death determination have regained momentum, and recent cases involving the neurological determination of death ("brain death") in the United States h...
journal_title:Perspectives in biology and medicine
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1353/pbm.2015.0036
更新日期:2015-01-01 00:00:00
abstract::As a result of the growth of evidence-based practices across the world, health-care providers and policymakers in the United States, United Kingdom, and Europe have established institutes such as the United Kingdom's National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) to produce clinical guidelines that physi...
journal_title:Perspectives in biology and medicine
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1353/pbm.0.0084
更新日期:2009-04-01 00:00:00
abstract::The treatment of broken bones has long adhered to principles of tight juxtaposition of fracture ends and of strict rest. Splinting and casting with plaster of Paris helped considerably. Attempts at internal splinting with pegs, bolts, or stabilizing contraptions usually failed. Foreign materials were either not biocom...
journal_title:Perspectives in biology and medicine
pub_type: 传,历史文章,杂志文章
doi:10.1353/pbm.2014.0021
更新日期:2014-07-01 00:00:00
abstract::As part of a mid-1940s malaria research program, U.S. Public Health Service researchers working in South Carolina chose to withhold treatment from a group of subjects while testing the efficacy of a new insecticide. Research during World War II had generated new tools to fight malaria, including the insecticide DDT an...
journal_title:Perspectives in biology and medicine
pub_type: 历史文章,杂志文章
doi:10.1353/pbm.2008.0011
更新日期:2008-01-01 00:00:00
abstract::Diverse and non-coherent sets of epistemological principles currently inform research in the general area of functional genomics. Here, from the personal point of view of a scientist with over half a century of immersion in hypothesis driven scientific discovery, I compare and deconstruct the ideological bases of prom...
journal_title:Perspectives in biology and medicine
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1353/pbm.2015.0025
更新日期:2015-04-01 00:00:00
abstract::Iraqi detainees subjected to torture and mistreatment at Abu Ghraib prison may continue to suffer from significant physical and psychological consequences of their abuse. This article reports two cases of Iraqi individuals allegedly tortured at Abu Ghraib. Detailed forensic evaluations were conducted approximately one...
journal_title:Perspectives in biology and medicine
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1353/pbm.2006.0059
更新日期:2006-10-01 00:00:00
abstract::When we figure medical practice as warfare, an individual clinician may be either a dutiful combatant or a conscientious objector. The rhetorical structure of this choice means that clinicians may exercise their consciences by loyally joining or disloyally exiting the medical ranks' battle against disease. But there a...
journal_title:Perspectives in biology and medicine
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1353/pbm.2019.0025
更新日期:2019-01-01 00:00:00
abstract::There is a growing national awareness that the extraordinary extension of life expectancy in our society poses an impending crisis for our health-care system. This is due in large part to the scarcity of primary-care providers, especially geriatricians. To address these concerns, the Obama administration has considere...
journal_title:Perspectives in biology and medicine
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1353/pbm.0.0092
更新日期:2009-07-01 00:00:00
abstract::The clinical trial of the AbioCor artificial heart, initiated in July 2001 and still in process, has taken place within a matrix of social and cultural patterns that are both "old" and new. The old patterns--those that have accompanied previous clinical trials of other vital artificial organs and transplantation in th...
journal_title:Perspectives in biology and medicine
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1353/pbm.2004.0006
更新日期:2004-01-01 00:00:00
abstract::The general population is experiencing lifelong exposure to old and new hazardous substances. By using data collected from a subject's own teeth, accuracy in determining the effects of exposure is assured since extrapolation is excluded. The establishment of a common tooth bank can provide means to integrate data from...
journal_title:Perspectives in biology and medicine
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1353/pbm.1988.0031
更新日期:1988-10-01 00:00:00
abstract::Charles Dickens's adult life parallels the period when the movement for sanitary reform took root in England. Although he was not one of its leaders, he became in time one of its most outspoken advocates. This essay describes Dickens's growing involvement in the sanitary movement and looks at one of the most important...
journal_title:Perspectives in biology and medicine
pub_type: 传,历史文章,杂志文章
doi:10.1353/pbm.2003.0025
更新日期:2003-04-01 00:00:00
abstract::Of all the principles set out by Flexner in 1910, the most fundamental, that of academic and scientific excellence, is more relevant to medical education in the United Kingdom today than ever before. To realize this, undergraduate medical education (UGME) at Oxford has evolved to incorporate the tutorial method of tea...
journal_title:Perspectives in biology and medicine
pub_type: 传,历史文章,杂志文章
doi:10.1353/pbm.2011.0013
更新日期:2011-01-01 00:00:00
abstract::After almost 50 years in science, I believe that there is an acceptable, often advantageous chasm between open-ended basic research-free exploration without a practical destination and in which the original ideas may fade into new concepts-and translational research or clinical research. My basic research on crystalli...
journal_title:Perspectives in biology and medicine
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1353/pbm.2010.0000
更新日期:2010-10-01 00:00:00
abstract::Laura Ferguson's The Visible Skeleton Series constitutes an artistic self-representation of scoliosis. Ferguson employs high-tech medical imaging and innovative graphical techniques to suggest a novel view of her skeletal "deformity." This section presents introductions to the series by a historian of medicine and by ...
journal_title:Perspectives in biology and medicine
pub_type: 传,历史文章,杂志文章
doi:10.1353/pbm.2004.0023
更新日期:2004-04-01 00:00:00
abstract::Medical leadership and leadership education have recently emerged as subjects of an expanding though as yet uncritical literature. Considerable attention is being given to the development of courses and electives, together with some proposals for generalizing these offerings to all medical students and doctors. This a...
journal_title:Perspectives in biology and medicine
pub_type: 杂志文章
doi:10.1353/pbm.2013.0027
更新日期:2013-07-01 00:00:00