When the 'Call for Abstracts' was published on the Web in May 1999, we hoped, but did not expect to see, so many diverse and qualified entries as we did. The Life Science panel alone received over 35 submissions, covering all the aspects from botanical over molecular biological and neurobiological to medical aspects. All of those proposals revealed a high scientific excellence that was proven by often numerous referred publications in highly reputable journals. This richness in submissions and the restrictions in available space made it very hard for us to choose the articles presented in this first issue of the 'Annals of the MCFA'. We had long and lively discussions, yet our main concern was always to try to reflect both the scientific excellence and the diversity of the original abstracts. We hope that in the upcoming issues of the Annals, we shall have the same hard time to choose from such a broad variety of themes, and we encourage those authors who were not chosen this time to monitor the 'Annals' and the schedule of the next issues.
The three articles by Bénédicte Sanson, William M. Gallagher, and José Pérez de la Lastra deal with three very different, yet highly important aspects in Life Sciences.
Bénédicte Sanson describes her work on the biology of development of organisms by using a useful model system in genetics, the fruit fly Drosophila. This animal model has yielded key results in the study of genes and their functions that have also been found in other animals, including humans. The characterisation of molecules that control the different stages of the development in all organisms and how these molecules govern cell fate and behaviour is an exciting and active field in current biological science. Moreover, these studies may be important for the elucidation of molecular aspects of some human cancers and genetics diseases. One of the intriguing matters of developmental biology is how individual cells interact and communicate between them, in order to give rise to the global pattern of the organ or organism. Sanson focuses her work on the so-called Wnt genes, which are involved in these processes of intercellular communication. Proteins coded by these genes are liberated into the extracellular space where they bind to target cells. Once activated, they send a specific signal from the cell surface to the nucleus in order to modulate gene expression and induce subsequent changes in the different organs. One of the main questions of her work is how these secreted molecules travel long distances through developing tissues in order to produce their effects, which has been the origin of debates in this field.
The contribution by William M. Gallagher summarizes the enormous success in the understanding of cancer therapy, where a single gene has been identified, the gene p53, that seems to be involved in more than 50% of all human cancer types. This gene regulates cell response to adverse stress such as damage to the DNA. His work suggests that the lack of protein function following mutation of that gene can account for further tumour-promoting properties and that understanding of the p53-dependent pathway may contribute to improve cancer therapy. Indeed, the identification of a novel protein that interacts with certain mutants of p53, a so-called Mutant Binding Protein 1 (MBP1), raises the hope that, by targeting this specific protein, treatments may arise that help to determine and improve patient prognosis.
In José Pérez de la Lastra's article an important issue in clinical sciences is addressed that poses until today a major obstacle for organ transplantation, i.e. the low and insufficient availability of human donor organs. This problem has encouraged scientists to use organs from other species to bypass the lack of availability of required organs. This technique, called xenotransplantation (i.e. the transfer of organs between different species), is still under development and before this technique becomes a reality for clinical purposes further studies are required, primarily in terms of safety and effectiveness. The major problems are rejection by the host's immune system, the risk of transmission of pathogens, e.g. animal viruses to humans, and effectiveness. Perez de la Lastra describes the hyperacute rejection and subsequent destruction of grafted pig organs after transplantation, and how these reactions are mediated by the complement system, a system that controls the immune response to the introduction of foreign tissue. Attempts are being made to block this mechanism of rejection by the introduction of genes encoding human complement regulators into the pig, a sort of "humanising"these organs. The work of Pérez de la Lastra focuses on the characterisation of endogenous pig complement inhibitors. He suggests that the experimental success of the overexpression of complement regulators of human origin in pigs leads to methods to reduce the adverse reactions to the grafted tissues but that this success may be due to an increment in endogenous porcine complement inhibitors. "The human origin [of complement regulators] may be of secondary importance" for xenotransplantation.