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White House Submits Sotomayor's Questionnaire To Senate Judiciary Committee
The Senate Judiciary Committee"s vetting of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, President Obama"s nominee for the Supreme Court, officially began Thursday when the White House delivered her written responses to a comprehensive questionnaire designed by the committee"s leadership, Roll Call reports. The questionnaire -- developed by Committee Chair Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and ranking member Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) -- will be used as part of preparations for Sotomayor"s as-yet-unscheduled round of confirmation hearings (Stanton, Roll Call, 6/4).Sotomayor disclosed a large amount of information in the questionnaire, such as her net worth and a timeline for when she learned that she was under consideration by the White House as a potential replacement to retiring Supreme Court Justice David Souter (Perine, CQ Today, 6/4). According to Roll Call, Sotomayor"s responses might offer members of both parties "fodder to support or oppose her nomination."Leahy, who has the authority to schedule the confirmation hearings, said in a statement that Sotomayor "has advanced the confirmation process by promptly complying with this Senate requirement, and now the Senate should promptly schedule hearings to fairly consider her nomination to our highest court," adding, "The unfair attacks that have been leveled at her from outside the Senate are all the more reason to give her the chance to respond." Earlier this week, he said that he would announce a start date for the hearings after Sotomayor"s responses were received (Roll Call, 6/4). Meanwhile, Sotomayor on Thursday continued another round of private meetings with senators on Capitol Hill, including a few GOP senators who earlier had expressed concerns about her past comments and actions, CQ Today reports (CQ Today, 6/4).Questions Over Sotomayor"s Position on Abortion-Rights Issue RemainIn related news, USA Today on Friday examined how Sotomayor in the past 17 years as a federal judge "has left no clear footprints revealing" her position on abortion-rights issues. This week, some Democratic senators in private meetings with Sotomayor attempted to seek answers, while advocates on both sides of the debate are urging senators to question her about her views on Roe v. Wade during the expected confirmation hearings. On Wednesday, following a meeting with Sotomayor, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said that she believes Sotomayor has respect for judicial precedent. Nancy Northup, president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said, "I don"t have concerns about this nominee in the sense that I think there is something on the record (against abortion rights)," adding, "We just think it"s important for Supreme Court nominees to say where they stand." Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life, agreed, noting the lack of a definitive position on abortion rights in Sotomayor"s record. Feinstein also said that she will persist on abortion-rights issues. "I remember what it was like when abortion was illegal, and the lives of young, desperate women were in jeopardy," she said, adding that she is concerned "Americans no longer appreciate what it would mean if (abortion rights) were taken away" (Biskupic, USA Today, 6/5).

Normal Development Of Cells With Abnormal Numbers Of Nuclei
Most of our cells contain a single nucleus that harbors 46 chromosomes (DNA and protein complexes that contain our genes). However, during normal postnatal development, liver cells containing two nuclei, each of which have 46 chromosomes, appear. These cells, which are known as binucleated tetraploid hepatocytes, arise in all mammals as a result of failure of the cellular process cytokinesis (the process by which the bulk of a cell, excluding the nucleus, divides to form two "daughter" cells). New insight into the failure of this process has now been provided by Chantal Desdouets and colleagues, at Institut Cochin, France, who have identified a cellular signaling pathway that leads to cytokinesis failure and the formation of binucleated tetraploid hepatocytes in rodents.
News of the day
Teenagers Show The Government How To Help Tackle Diabetes And Cancer, UK
A group of 15-16 year old students have been reporting directly to the UK government, (Tuesday 30th June), on their proposals for how nanotechnology could be used to help meet the future needs of the healthcare sector.
Sexual Health

Sensitivity To NNKOAc Is Associated With Renal Cancer Risk

UroToday.com - Cigarette smoking is a major risk factor for renal cell carcinoma (RCC). Cigarette smoke contains a variety of carcinogenic chemicals such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, aromatic amines, heterocyclic aromatic amines and N-nitrosamines. Among the N-nitrosamines present in cigarette smoke, 4-(methylnitrosamino)-1-(3-pyridyl)-1-butanone (NNK) is the most abundant and the most potent in terms of carcinogenicity. DNA damage requires a DNA repair system that will recognize and repair the damage through complex pathways. Failure to repair the DNA damage may lead to genomic instability and subsequent carcinogenesis. DNA damage/repair capacity can be quantified by phenotypic assays such as the mutagen sensitivity assay, host cell reaction and comet assay. Comet assay, also known as single cell gel electrophoresis technique, is a well-established, technically simple, relatively fast and inexpensive functional assay to measure DNA damage at the individual cell level. The comet assay has been shown to be an effective way to measure NNKOAc-induced damage levels. Therefore in the current study, the authors used the comet assay to assess whether sensitivity to NNKOAc-induced DNA damage was associated with increased risk of RCC in a population-based case-control study among 95 RCC cases and 188 matched controls. RCC cases were recruited from The University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, Texas. All cases were individuals with newly diagnosed, histologically confirmed RCC and were residents of Texas. Healthy control subjects without a history of cancer, except non-melanoma skin cancer, were identified and recruited using the random digit dialing (RDD) methods. In RDD, randomly selected phone numbers from household were used to contact potential control volunteers in the same residency of cases according to the telephone directory listings. The controls were frequency matched to the cases by age (+5 years), sex, ethnicity and county of residence. All study participants completed a 45-min in-person interview that was administered by M. D. Anderson Cancer Center staff interviewers. The interview elicited information on demographics, smoking history, family history of cancer, occupational history and exposures and medical history. Half of the cases had a BMI of at least 30 compared to 31.91% of controls. Similarly, only 17.89% of cases had a BMI of less than 25 compared to 29.79% of controls (P = 0.007). Among the cases, 56.84% reported history of hypertension as compared to 39.89% in controls (P = 0.007). These data are consistent with literature that obesity and hypertension are risk factors for RCC. In Comet assay, Olive tail moments were used as a parameter for the level of DNA damage, the higher the tail moments, the higher the DNA damage level. At baseline, the DNA damage was not significantly different between cases and controls (1.08 vs. 1.02, P = 0.112). However, the NNKOAc-induced Olive tail moments were significantly higher in cases than in controls (2.27 vs. 1.76, P = 0.002). When NNKOAc-induced damage were subtracted by baseline DNA damage, the differences remained significant (1.02 vs. 0.78, P = 0.018). Next, the authors analyzed the association between DNA damage levels and risk for RCC. Using the 75th percentile Olive tail moments of the controls as the cutoff point, they found that higher levels of NNKOAc-induced DNA damage were associated with a 2-fold significantly increased risk of RCC (95% Confidence Interval [95% CI], 1.17-3.61). In quartile analysis, there was a dose-response association between NNK-induced damage and risk of RCC. Compared with individuals within the lowest quartile of NNKOAc-induced damage (the 1st quartile), the ORs for the second, third and fourth quartiles were 1.61 (95% CI: 0.69-3.75), 1.77 (95% CI: 0.76-4.09) and 3.00 (95% CI: 1.36-6.62) with a significant trend (P for trend, 0.006). This is the first study to evaluate the association between DNA repair capacity to NNK-induced damage and RCC risk. Future studies with larger sample sizes are warranted to investigate the association between NNKOAc sensitivity and RCC risk as modified by other risk factors such as cigarette smoking and obesity. Written by Jessica Clague, Lina Shao, Jie Lin, Shine Chang, Yimin Zhu, Wei Wang, Christopher G. Wood and Xifeng Wu as part of Beyond the Abstract on UroToday.com UroToday - the only urology website with original content written by global urology key opinion leaders actively engaged in clinical practice. To access the latest urology news releases from UroToday, go to: www.urotoday.com Copyright © 2009 - UroToday


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