RELAXIN-LIKE FACTOR IN MALE GONADAL DEVELOPMENT

描述：（从申请人的摘要扫描）在大约3.5%的 新生男性生殖腺未下降（隐睾症），一种疾病 导致不育，并与睾丸癌的高发病率有关。 癌在没有任何有效药物的情况下，手术被广泛用于 纠正这种状况。虽然手术可以使性腺发育进展到 生育能力，似乎睾丸癌的威胁增加， 相应减少。这些都是有说服力的理由来研究生理学 睾丸发育的生物化学和生物化学，并探索药物治疗的可能性。 设计，以消除缺陷，并与它，睾丸的倾向， 癌症形成 RLF（松弛素样因子），这似乎是一个绝对的要求， 睾丸发育，目前是治疗的最佳候选人 对新生儿的干预。RLF可在青春期前血清中检测到， 儿童（0.3 ng/mL），但在青春期仅在男性中升高至1.2 ng/mL。选择性 RLF基因的缺失导致小鼠不育，注射我们的 抗RLF抗体进入妊娠大鼠，产前5天，引起保留 当所有对照动物在20日龄时， 完全下降的性腺。毫无疑问，RLF是必要的。 性腺发育事件调控链的组成部分， RLF基因或RLF受体基因的缺失或缺陷可以是RLF基因或RLF受体基因的缺陷。 我们人口中某些部分的发育障碍的原因。我们的工作 将强调RLF在这些过程中发挥的作用，并将 显著提高了治疗隐睾症药物的前景。 我们打算使用特别设计的合成RLF衍生物和抗RLF 抗体来研究性腺发育的过程， 替代疗法的前景。RLF是一种约6，300的小分子 道尔顿，它将穿透新生儿的肠壁，进入 这样在出生时检测到的性腺并发症就可以得到治疗 立即通过膳食补充剂。

DESCRIPTION: (Scanned from the applicant's abstract) In about 3.5 percent of newborn human males the gonads are undescended (chryptorchidism), a condition that leads to infertility and is associated with a high rate of testicular cancer. In the absence of any effective drugs, surgery is used widely to correct that condition. While surgery allows gonadal development to progress to fertility, it appears that the increased threat of testicular cancer is not reduced correspondingly. These are persuasive reasons to study the physiology and biochemistry of testicular development and explore the possibility of drug design to eliminate the defect and, with it, the propensity for testicular cancer formation. RLF (relaxin-like factor), which appears to be an absolute requirement for testicular development, is presently the best candidate for therapeutic intervention in the neonate. RLF can be detected in the sera of prepubertal children (0.3 ng/mL) but rises at puberty to 1.2 ng/mL in males only. Selective deletion of the RLF gene causes infertility in mice, and injection of our anti-RLF antibodies into pregnant rats, 5 days pre-partum, caused retention of testicles in the body cavity at 20 days of age when all the control animals had totally descended gonads. There can be no doubt that RLF is a necessary component of the regulatory chain of events for gonadal development and that absence of or a defect in the RLF gene or the RLF receptor gene may be the cause of the developmental disturbance in segments of our population. Our work will highlight the role RLF is playing in these processes and will significantly improve the prospects for a drug to treat cryptorchidism. We intend to use specially designed synthetic RLF derivatives and anti-RLF antibodies to study the process of gonadal development and to examine the prospects of substitution therapy. RLF is a small molecule of about 6,300 Dalton, which will pentrate the intestinal wall of the neonate and enter the bloodstream so that gonadal complications detected at birth could be treated immediately by dietary supplement.