Alan A. Diamond
Professor
Division of Nutritional Sciences
University of Illinois at urbana champaign
United States of America
Biography
He has done his Ph.D., 1982, SUNY at Stony Brook, New York, B.S., 1978, Brooklyn College, New York.
Research Interest
Mechanism of cancer prevention by selenium, selenoprotein biosynthesis and its regulation.Selenium is an essential trace element currently under consideration as cancer preventative. Twenty-five years of animal studies have provided consistent data indicating that low-level supplementation of diets of rodents with selenium can reduce cancer incidence in all organs examined and provide protection against a wide range of carcinogens. Human epidemiology and supplementation studies have indicated that selenium may be effective in humans as well. The mechanism by which selenium protects against cancer remains unknown, but we hypothesize that the benefits of selenium are realized by its stimulation of selenium-containing proteins, or selenoproteins. Of the 25 human selenoproteins, our focus is on the selenoenzyme glutathione peroxidase. Our efforts employ a combination of approaches to investigate the role of glutathione peroxidase in cancer prevention and as the mediator of the beneficial effects of selenium.
Publications
-
Diamond, A.M. (2004) On the road to selenocysteine. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA 101:13395-13396. Hu, Y., R.V. Benya, R.E. Carroll, and A.M. Diamond. (2005) Allelic loss of the gene for the GPx-1 selenium-containing protein is a common event in cancer. J. Nutr. 135:S3021-3024.
-
Diwadkar-Navsariwala, V. and A.M. Diamond. (2004) The link between selenium and chemoprevention: a case for selenoproteins. J. Nutr. 134:2899-2902.
-
Hu, Y.J., M.E. Dolan, R. Bae, Y. Yee, M. Roy, R. Glickman, L. Kiremidjian-Schumacher, and A.M. Diamond. (2004) Allelic loss at the GPx-1 locus and the risk for cancer of the head and neck. Biol. Trace Elements Res. 101:97-106.
