Int. Med J Vol 3 No 2 December 2004

POSSIBLE ROLE OF CALMODULIN IN GENE ACTIVATION AND REGULATION

Salih Falah [1] and AlabadiRessan. H. [2]

OBJECTIVE:

The work has been carried out to correlate the significant increase in calmodulin content with the growth rate of prostatic cancer tissue

MATERIALS AND METHODS:

Calmodulin with labeled I-125 RIA kit (New England Nuclear) was used to assess calmodulin concentrations in tissues from prostatic cancer (thirty patients) provided from different hospitals in Baghdad. Samples were divided into two groups; slow and fast growing cells. Partially purified calmodulin from patients was used in this assay.

RESULTS:

There was significant increase in calmodulin amount from the affected victims in compare to control. The increase was correlated to the malignant potential of the tumor.

DISCUSSION:

 We have shown previously that the amount of calmodulin significantly increased in tissue taken from Kaposi’s sarcomas (KS) as well as from blood cells of AIDS patients. The results in this report in agreement with other pervious reports. Since protein kinases are Ca (2+)/calmodulin dependant and changes in intracellular calcium and calmodulin concentration affect progression through the mitotic cell cycle, this finding suggest that calmodulin is strongly involved in tumor cell growth and regulation.