And the big paper is in press

Our manuscript is accepted in the Biochemical Journal.  It is a too brief moment of satisfaction of completing a project.  A special thanks to the experimentalists who succeeded in converting the complex problem of cell division with damaged DNA into a powerful experimental model. Of the cell lines we tested, HT-29 cells have features that provide a window of the key transition point of entry into mitosis after a checkpoint. 
What's next - we have developed a non-radioisotope assay to measure enzyme activity in mitotic cells; we are testing how to block checkpoint adaptation, and we are looking very closely at the DNA in cancer cells that survive checkpoint adaptation. 
If interested, please feel free to contact us for questions, reagents or a copy of the paper.

The big paper is finally submitted

We have submitted a manuscript on our principle project.  This is the period of calm that lays between the rush to submit and the time before one receives comments from the reviewers.  The manuscript describes how human cancer cells undergo checkpoint adaptation:  a sort of  "double or nothing" cellular game in which cells will divide even though they have damaged DNA.  The manuscript connects the dots of hundreds of observations described in the literature where mitosis has been observed in cells treated with DNA damaging agents.  We have mapped this terrain in a systematic fashion.  We then go beyond mapping by proposing a mechanism to explain the steps to enter mitosis under these conditions.  The important bit is that once you have a good map you can plan where you should go next.
Please feel free to contact me for more information or for a preprint, while the calm lasts.

2012

A New Year
We had the pleasure of hosting a French stagiaire in the laboratory and we wish her luck with her studies back in France.  An undergraduate has moved onward to a co-op position after helping set up the video microscopy and winning 1st place in oral presentation of his work.  The video microscopy technique provided insight into the number of cells in population that undergo checkpoint adaptation.  The current team is now working on applying new techniques to measure enzyme activity and DNA damage in treated cancer cells so that we can predict better the mechanisms that drive checkpoint adaptation.

New paper in press

We have a new paper in press in "Life Sciences".  This paper describes novel Chk1 inhibitors that are highly active in kinase assays and in cell-based assays.  We now use Chk1 inhibitors to modify the timing of "checkpoint adaptation."  The paper was a joint effort between the pharmaceutical company Servier Laboratories (France) and our own Mr Philip Kubara (his first paper).

How to see it? - go to the Pubmed website, type "golsteyn chk1" and the link will appear.

Any questions, please feel free to contact me.