Shazia Ali

By Bilal Rah, Shazia Ali, Mohd Ishaq Dar and Dil Afroze

Breast cancer is one of the most common in female population worldwide and comprises about 22.9% of all cancers. Despite the prognosis and survival rates of breast cancer patients and survivors are comparatively better than other cancers, but their net outcome can be revealed by other factors like tumor grade, secondary effects of chemotherapy like insomnia and health behaviors, this distressing may decrease patient’s life expectancy. In the backdrop of this, the need of the hour for the breast cancer survivors is to assess multifactoral nonpharmacological interventions and the management that includes physical exercise, psychological and complementary medicine, which could be cost effective, widely accessible and more promising for breast cancer patients and survivors apart from pharmacological interventions.

Part of the book: Cancer Survivorship

By Shazia Ali, Mohd Ishaq Dar, Rafiq A. Rather and Dil Afroze

Cell cycle progression is driven by the sequential activation of a family of cyclin-dependent kinases (CDKs), which phosphorylate and activate proteins that execute events critical to cell cycle progression. Cell cycle checkpoints are scrutiny points that display the order, integrity, and fidelity of the major proceedings of the cell cycle. These comprise development to the correct cell size, the replication, integrity of the chromosomes, and their precise separation at mitosis. Many of these mechanisms are prehistoric in origin and highly preserved and hence have been deeply well versed by studies in model organisms such as the yeasts as well as in higher organisms. These molecular mechanisms switch alternative cell fates with substantial impact on tumor suppression. In the present study, we have explained different checkpoint pathways and the consequences of their dysfunction on cell fate in cancer.

Part of the book: Breast Cancer Biology

By Rabiya Rashid, Shazia Ali and Mahboob-Ul-Hussain

Breast cancer (BC) is a global public health burden, constituting the highest cancer incidence in women worldwide. Connexins 43 proteins propagate intercellular communication, gap junction intercellular communication (GJIC), remarkably expressed in several tumor types including liver, prostate, and breast. This domain of Cx43 possesses functionally critical sites identical to those involved in gating of channel and phosphorylation sites for various kinases. However, the mechanism by which Cx43 down regulation occurs in breast cancer is far from clear. Several mechanisms like Cx43 promoter hyper-methylation or a cancer-specific reduction of Cx43 expression/trafficking by the modulation of various components of the Cx43 life cycle give the idea to be involved in the down regulation of Connexins in mammary glands, but irreversible mutational alterations have not yet been proved to be among them. Summarily, the efficacy or specificity of these drugs can be increased by a combinatory approach considering an effect on both the Connexins and their regulatory molecules. This chapter will summarize the knowledge about the connexins and gap junction activities in breast cancer highlighting the differential expression and functional dynamics of connexins in the pathogenesis of the disease.

Part of the book: Global Women's Health