Jul 4, 2009
Posted by Beth on Jul 4, 2009 in Family, Food, General, Holidays, Life | 0 comments
I copied a friend’s recipe to spread around for people who’re making ice cream for the 4th of July.
Deb’s House Concerts
This is the easiest recipe I found. It uses no eggs. It requires no cooking. It’s super-easy! :) That’s what I like for my “Cooking for the Motivationally Challenged” posts. :) And, that’s what I like for myself, too! ;)
Vanilla Ice Cream Recipe for a 1.5 Quart Ice Cream Maker
Stir the following together and chill in the refrigerator for several hours, or overnight, before pouring into your ice cream maker. (The only variation I made is that my freezer wants only 4 cups of the recipe, and it expands to 6 cups while it freezes. I mixed the recipe below, then poured in 4 cups and saved the rest for the next batch.)
No-Cook Homemade Ice Cream
Southern Living , Aug 2004 by Dosier, Susan
1 cup sweetened condensed milk
1 cup evaporated milk
2 tablespoons brown sugar
2 tablespoons vanilla
2 cups whole milk
That’s all. That’s it. It’s that easy.
Just be sure your freezer tub insert has been in the freezer long enough to freeze liquid on contact. And, chill your ingredients long enough to have it really cold before adding it to the freezer. And, after the ice cream is ready, put it into an airtight container and put it into your freezer (if you don’t eat it all in one sitting!). :)
Two Recipes of Homemade Vanilla Ice Cream
I made two batches today. Actually, I mixed up the recipe last night, and made the first run this morning. Then, I thought the freezer can was still cold enough, so I mixed more and poured it in. (I did not follow the instructions to chill the ingredients before freezing or to add them to the freezer can straight from the freezer.) The second time it didn’t work. So, at this point, the recipe ingredients are cooling in the refrigerator and the freezer can is in the freezer. Maybe I’ll freeze the second batch tomorrow.
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Feb 3, 2009
Posted by Beth on Feb 3, 2009 in Cancer, Food, Myeloma, Myeloma Treatment, Research | 2 comments
This caught my eye because I’ve been on Velcade before and never gave a second thought to whether or not I should not be consuming green tea/green tea products.
Blood First Edition Paper, prepublished online February 3, 2009; DOI 10.1182/blood-2008-07-171389.
Submitted July 28, 2008
Accepted January 12, 2009
Encouse B. Golden, Philip Y. Lam, Adel Kardosh, Kevin J. Gaffney, Enrique Cadenas, Stan G. Louie, Nicos A. Petasis, Thomas C. Chen, and Axel H. Schonthal*
Department of Pathology, University of Southern California (USC) Keck School of Medicine (KSOM), Los Angeles, CA, United States
Department of Molecular Pharmacology and Toxicology, USC School of Pharmacy (SoP), Los Angeles, CA, United States
Department of Molecular Microbiology and Immunology, USC KSOM, Los Angeles, CA, United States
Department of Chemistry, USC College of Letters, Arts and Sciences, Los Angeles, CA, United States
Department of Clinical Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Economics and Policy, USC SoP, Los Angeles, CA, United States
Department of Neurosurgery, USC KSOM, Los Angeles, CA, United States
* Corresponding author; email: schontha@usc.edu.
The anticancer potency of green tea and its individual components is being intensely investigated, and some cancer patients already self-medicate with this ‘miracle herb’ in hopes of augmenting the anticancer outcome of their chemotherapy. Bortezomib (Velcade®) is a proteasome inhibitor in clinical use for multiple myeloma. Here, we investigated whether the combination of these compounds would yield increased antitumor efficacy in multiple myeloma and glioblastoma cell lines in vitro and in vivo. Unexpectedly, we discovered that various green tea constituents, in particular (-)-epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG) and other polyphenols with 1,2-benzenediol moieties, effectively prevented tumor cell death induced by bortezomib in vitro and in vivo. This pronounced antagonistic function of EGCG was only evident with boronic acid-based proteasome inhibitors (bortezomib, MG-262, PS-IX), but not with several non-boronic acid proteasome inhibitors (MG-132, PS-I, nelfinavir). EGCG directly reacted with bortezomib and blocked its proteasome inhibitory function; as a consequence, bortezomib could not trigger endoplasmic reticulum stress or caspase-7 activation, and did not induce tumor cell death. Taken together, our results indicate that green tea polyphenols may have the potential to negate the therapeutic efficacy of bortezomib and suggest that consumption of green tea products may be contraindicated during cancer therapy with bortezomib.
Feb 1, 2009
Posted by Beth on Feb 1, 2009 in Food, Life | 1 comment
What a great party! We had the honor of attending our sister’s 50th birthday party last night. It was perfect! The guests were a great group of people, the food was outstanding and the music was great. This one surpassed even a “Night Affair on Elm Street.”
Everyone should now go on over to the WriterHouse web site to make a donation in honor of Rachel’s birthday.
Beautifully presented food was a part of the celebration
Aug 22, 2008
Posted by Beth on Aug 22, 2008 in Cancer, Food, Myeloma, News, Ohio, Research | 0 comments
Thanks to Sandy for telling me about this.
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Seeking to improve on nature, scientists used a spice-based compound as a starting point and developed synthetic molecules that, in lab settings, are able to kill cancer cells and stop the cells from spreading.
The researchers are combining organic chemistry, computer-aided design and molecular biology techniques in developing and testing pharmaceutical compounds that can fight breast and prostate cancer cells. The synthetic molecules are derived from curcumin, a naturally occurring compound found in the spice turmeric.
Centuries of anecdotal evidence and recent scientific research suggest curcumin has multiple disease-fighting features, including anti-tumor properties. However, when eaten, curcumin is not absorbed well by the body. Instead, most ingested curcumin in food or supplement form remains in the gastrointestinal system and is eliminated before it is able to enter the bloodstream or tissues.
“Newer evidence describes how curcumin interacts with certain proteins to generate anti-cancer activity inside the body. We’re focusing on the pathways that are most involved in cancer and trying to optimize for those properties,” said James Fuchs, assistant professor of medicinal chemistry and pharmacognosy at Ohio State University and principal investigator on the project.
Fuchs presented the research today (8/17) at the American Chemical Society meeting in Philadelphia. He described a selection of the 40 compounds developed to date, emphasizing the synthetic molecules that appear to have the most potential to serve as the basis for anti-cancer drug development.
Fuchs and colleagues are continuing to refine compounds that are best structured to interact with a few overactive proteins that are associated with cell activity in breast and prostate cancers. Blocking these molecular targets can initiate cell death or stop cell migration in the cancers.
A major component of their strategy is called structure-based, computer-aided design, a relatively new technology in the drug discovery field. Before ever working with an actual compound, the scientists can make manipulations to computer-designed molecules and observe simulated interactions between molecules and proteins to predict which structural changes will make the most sense to pursue.
“Very small changes that may seem insignificant can have dramatic effects on these toxicity properties,” Fuchs said. “But most of the compounds we’ve made have been more potent than curcumin against the cancer cells.”
“Most of the interaction between our compound and the overactive protein comes from what are called hot spots on the protein’s surface,” said Chenglong Li, assistant professor of medicinal chemistry and pharmacognosy at Ohio State and an expert in computational chemistry. “For each spot, we can design small chemical fragments and link them together to make a molecule. This is what computer-aided design and modeling can do.”
Some of the most effective compounds have been tested for their effectiveness against human cancer cell lines – as well as whether they might be toxic to healthy cells. So far, the molecule favored by the researchers has a nearly 100-fold difference in toxicity to cancer cells vs. healthy cells, meaning it takes 100 times more of the compound to kill a healthy cell than it does to kill a cancer cell.
“Very small changes that may seem insignificant can have dramatic effects on these toxicity properties,” Fuchs said. “But most of the compounds we’ve made have been more potent than curcumin against the cancer cells.”
The computer-based predictions have suggested that the most effective compound developed to date can interact with proteins believed to be active in about 50 percent of all breast and prostate cancers.
“To be able to develop a drug that in the future could have potential to treat 50 percent of these cancers would be a major contribution,” said Jiayuh Lin, an investigator in Ohio State’s Comprehensive Cancer Center and an associate professor of pediatrics. Lin tests the experimental compounds in different types of breast and prostate cancer cell lines. He said some of the compounds also show potential to kill pancreatic cancer cells and inhibit cancer cell migration.
The computer-aided design also offers hints at the compounds’ suitability as the basis for a drug, such as whether the molecules will remain stable during metabolism and whether they will maintain a structure that the body can absorb into the bloodstream and tissues. The team is planning to continue refining the compounds before advancing to animal studies to test their effectiveness. The scientists hope to develop a chemotherapeutic agent available in pill form.
Additional members of the research group, dubbed the OSU Molecular Target Team, are Pui-Kai Li, chair and associate professor, and graduate students Jonathan Etter, Dalia Abdelhamid, Nicholas Regan, Deepak Bhasin, Bulbul Pandit and Katryna Cisek, all of Ohio State’s Division of Medicinal Chemistry and Pharmacognosy; and Ling Cen, Li Lin and Brian Hutzen of the Center for Childhood Cancer in the Research Institute at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus.
This work is supported by the Department of Defense Prostate Cancer Research Program, the James S. McDonnell Foundation, the National Foundation for Cancer Research, Ohio State’s Comprehensive Cancer Center and Ohio State’s College of Pharmacy.
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Contact: James Fuchs, (614) 247-7377; Fuchs.42@osu.edu or Chenglong Li, (614) 247-8786; cli@pharmacy.ohio-state.edu
http://researchnews.osu.edu/archive/curcumin.htm
Written by Emily Caldwell, (614) 292-8310; Caldwell.151@osu.edu
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