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In 1971, Chefaro, a subsidiary of the Dutch firm Organon, launched Predictor, Britain's first HPT. This project will recover the history of HPTs from c.1970 to the present day, when their widespread visibility and availability is taken for granted. It will be divided into four parts. Part One examines how Predictor, a laboratory tool repackaged, but not redesigned, for domestic use, was produced and marketed, received by consumer watchdog organisations, and appropriated by women's liberation gro ups. Part Two examines the public debate over Schering's Primodos, a controversial pregnancy test drug that was taken off the market in 1978 amidst fears of a repeat of the Thalidomide tragedy. Part Three investigates how not only technological innovation and slick marketing, but also NHS cutbacks and the rise of IVF contributed to the runaway commercial success of Clearblue, launched by Unipath, a subsidiary of the multinational Unilever, in 1985-88. Part Four recovers the mainstreaming and aes theticization of pregnancy testing in fiction, cinema, television, comics, artworks, and new media to reexamine assumptions about the textual and visual politics of reproduction, currently strongly identified with highly charged images of the late-term human fetus and 'baby bump'.

Aryl Hydrocarbon Receptor Interacting Protein (AIP) is a co-chaperone molecule that can bind to many proteins including Heat shock protein-90 (Hsp90). We found that AIP conditionally deleted in B cells resulted in decreased Germinal Centre (GC) B cells and decreased expression of the proto-oncogene B cell lymphoma-6 (Bcl-6) that is over-expressed in many aggressive B cell lymphomas that are difficult to treat with conventional drugs. We found that AIP could bind to Bcl-6 and treatment of AIP deficient B cells with a proteasome inhibitor increased Bcl-6 expression indicating that AIP protects Bcl-6 from being degraded, but the precise molecular mechanism how this occurs is not known. AIP might function as a tumour promoter by protecting Bcl-6 from degradation. This proposal aims to study: 1. The molecular mechanisms by which AIP regulates Bcl-6. 2. Test the effectiveness of inhibiting AIP on tumour growth in vivo. Therapeutically targeting AIP would be an attractive target, as it would lead to the loss of Bcl-6 and the treatment of aggressive B cell lymphomas. This proposal will provide the rationale for developing specific AIP inhibitors as a therapy for lymphoma and solid tumours.

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