16. Environmental specimen cryobanking

Density gradient centrifugation usually allows efficient separation of mononuclear cells from granulocytes using fresh human blood samples. However, we have found that with cryopreserved blood samples, density gradient centrifugation fails to separate granulocytes from mononuclear cells and have explored using immunomagnetic anti-CD15 microbeads as an alternate method to separate these cell populations. Using cryopreserved blood samples from 10 healthy donors we have shown that granulocytes express a significantly higher level of CD15 antigen than monocytes and lymphocytes, which allows for their efficient separation from mononuclear cells using anti-CD15 microbeads. This procedure is critical for purification of individual cell populations from cryopreserved leukocyte samples and could also potentially be applied to avoid granulocyte contamination of mononuclear cells isolated from stored blood and from patients with sepsis or thermal injury.     

Environmental carcinogenesis and biotechnology.

Numerous environmental and host factors, some of which are known and some unknown, contribute to cancer development. While data and studies abound, our current understanding of the relation between cancer and the environment is still very limited. Understanding environmental carcinogenesis is critical to its effective management. Biotechnology has revolutionalized the study of biological and biomedical sciences. This minireview provides an overview of environmental carcinogenesis with emphasis on the contributions and prospects of biotechnology in advancing an understanding of environmental carcinogenesis for its prevention and intervention.     

Environmental biotechnology for sustainability.

In the post-industrial society, waste management is integrated in the concepts of responsibility, reliability and continuity. Therefore industry and public office are obliged to implement the concepts of structured environmental management systems more and more strictly. The endpoints are dependent on the type of wastes and on the priorities set by society. They will with time evolve towards more restriction of all kinds of emissions. This will require increasing inputs of labour, information technology and energy into waste treatment and overall waste management. Particularly for aqueous and gaseous wastes that are not contained, continuously improving treatment with maximum re-use and minimum dissipation in the ecosphere will be the trend of the future. Moreover, the public in general and the individual citizen in particular will request to have (bio)assays to monitor regularly and autonomously the quality of his environment. Such advanced waste management requires considerable energy input. It thus may come in conflict with current concerns about CO2-emissions and the Kyoto agreements. Innovative approaches to combine waste management and the International Climate Change Partnership (ICCP) directives, for instance by implementing biological carbon sequestration, are therefore warranted. Biotechnology has a major role to play particularly in terms of advanced treatment down to ng/l-levels and in terms of validating the quality of the environment by means of powerful and intelligent bio-monitoring devices.     

Web alert. Environmental biotechnology. Regulatory affairs

A selection of World Wide Web sites relevant to papers published in this issue of Current Opinion in Biotechnology.     

Environmental agents altering lung biochemistry.

Environmental agents may enter the lung via the tracheobronchial tree or via the bloodstream. They can interact with lung cell metabolism and set in motion a sequence of events that leads to damage, adaptation, and repair. Biochemical signs of lung damage described include lipid peroxidation, decreased biosynthesis of macromolecules, depressed enzyme activities, and the binding of metabolites of the offending agent to tissue macromolecules. As a response to acute damage, lung can activate several biochemical pathways. The selenium-glutathione peroxidase system affords protection against lipid peroxidation and increased activity of superoxide dismutase provides oxygen tolerance. Biochemical adaptation occasionally occurs very quickly: the herbicides paraquat and diquat produce an acute loss of cellular NADPH in lung. This is accompanied by a sudden increase in pentose phosphate pathway activity. Biochemical events accompanying tissue repair following lung injury are increased synthesis of nucleic acids and of protein and enhanced enzymatic activity. The repair following lung damage caused by drugs may be inhibited by oxygen.     

Environmental factors in drug metabolism.

Although various kinds of environmental factors may alter the activity of cytochrome P-450 enzymes in liver micromes, their effects on the pharmacokinetics of drugs and other foreign compounds in living animals may not be as great as might be predicted from assays of these enzymes in vitro. Indeed, the effects will depend on the relative importance of excretory and metabolic mechanisms in the elimination of the drug, the relative importance of various metabolic reactions in different tissues, the extraction ratio of the drug by the liver, and in some instances on the route of administration of the drug. Moreover, the effect of the various environmental factors on the pharmacologic and the toxicologic actions of the drug will depend on whether these actions are caused by the parent foreign compounds or by one or more of their metabolites. It may also be important that the environmental factors may alter not only relative activiteis of the cytochrome P-450 in liver microsomes but also the activities of other drug-metabolizing enzymes and that the relative effects of the environmental factors of these enzymes may differ depending on the animal species or the animal strain. Indeed, a given factor may increase the pharmacologic effects of a drug metabolite in one animal species but decrease it in another. For these reasons, it frequently is not possible to predict the effects of environmental factors on drug action in living animals solely from in vitro rates of metabolism of model substrates.     

Environmental carcinogenesis: an integrative model.

An integrative theory is proposed in which environmental carcinogenesis is viewed as a process by which the genetic control of cell division and differentiation is altered by carcinogens. In this theory, carcinogens include physical, chemical, and viral "mutagens," as well as chemical and viral gene modulators. Existing explanations of carcinogenesis can be considered either as somatic mutation theories or as epigenetic theories. Evidence seems to support the hypothesis that both mutations and epigenetic processes are components of carcinogenesis. The mutational basis of cancer is supported by the clonal nature of tumors, the mutagenicity of most carcinogens, high mutation frequencies in cells of cancer-prone human fibroblasts lacking DNA repair enzymes, the correlation of in vitro DNA damage and in vitro mutation and transformation frequencies with in vivo tumorigenesis, age-related incidences of various hereditary tumors, and the correlation between photoreactivation of DNA damage and the biological amelioration of UV-induced neoplasms. Since both mutagens and gene modulators can be carcinogenic it may be that carcinogens affect genes which control cell division. An integration of the mutation and epigenetic theories of cancer with the "two-stage" theory and Comings's general theory of carcinogenesis is proposed. This integrative theory postulates that carcinogens can affect regulatory genes which control a series of "transforming genes." A general hypothesis is advanced that involves a common mechanism of somatic mutagenesis via error-prone repair of DNA damage which links carcinogenesis, teratogenesis, atherosclerosis and aging. Various concepts are presented to provide a framework for evaluating the scientific, medical, and social implications of cancer.