Radhakrishna Nagumantri

Prenatal diagnosis employs a variety of techniques to determine the health of fetus. Without knowledge gained by prenatal diagnosis, there could be an untoward outcome for the fetus or the mother or both. There are a variety of non-invasive and invasive techniques available for prenatal diagnosis. Each of them can be applied only during specific time periods during the pregnancy for greatest utility. All current methods of fetal karyotyping are invasive and carry a definite, albeit small, procedure-related risk. Because of this and testing costs, only women older than 35 years who have a greater risk for fetal aneuploidy are currently offered prenatal testing. The isolation and analysis of fetal cells from maternal blood would allow non-invasive prenatal genetic screening and diagnosis. One method that is currently being explored involves culturing fetal cells. Developing conditions which allow the number of fetal-derived cells to expand in culture and the number of maternally derived cells to be suppressed in culture may lead to a new selection process for obtaining fetal cells. In this paper the isolation of fetal cells using magnetic cell sorter methods was discussed. It was found that 5000 cells were present in 28 million maternal cells.

Vitamin A and its derivatives (known as retinoids) play a crucial role in vision, inhibition of cell proliferation, cell division and differentiation and Fetal development. The active form of vitamin A is retinol, also known as vitamin A1 is found in animal products as preformed vitamin A. All-trans-retinol (vitamin A) has been studied as antioxidant in in vitro but limited data is available on cytotoxic effects of retinol on cancer cell lines. In this paper, the cytotoxic effects of retinol on breast cancer cells (MDA-MB-231) and prostate cancer cells (PC-3) were studied. Our experiments showed that maximum cytotoxicity was achieved at 48 hours and at 100µM concentration of all-trans-retinol on both the cell lines. The results have significant implications for understanding anti-cancer effects of all-trans-retinol on breast and prostate cancer cell lines.