PR-104, currently in clinical trial, is converted systemically to the dinitrobenzamide nitrogen mustard prodrug PR-104A, which is reduced selectively in hypoxic cells to cytotoxic hydroxylamine (PR-104H) and amine (PR-104M) metabolites. Here, we evaluate the roles of this reductive metabolism, and DNA interstrand cross-links (ICL), in the hypoxic and aerobic cytotoxicity of PR-104. Using a pane...

Alkyl-lysophospholipids (ALP) are analogues of 2-lysophosphatidylcholine that have been reported to have selective antitumor activity. These compounds could potentially be useful in purging bone marrow of leukemic cells in autologous marrow transplantation in acute leukemia. To determine the efficacy of pharmacological purging by ALP, we have designed a human assay system to mimic the condition...

Mentha pulegium L. is one of the Mentha (Labiatae) species that is grown in many different parts of the earth including northern Iran. The total ethanolic extract of the aerial parts of this plant is used in this work to investigate on the possible cytotoxicity on two different cell lines. Human lung carcinoma cells (A549) and human breast cancer (MCF7), have been used to show the clonogenic co...

Marrow involvement by small cell lung cancer (SCLC) is detected in 10-23% of patients at initial diagnosis by marrow aspirate and biopsy techniques. To improve the detection and potentially monitor marrow involvement by SCLC we have attempted to concentrate malignant cells with clonogenic potential on a discontinuous density gradient (DDG). The bone marrow from 43 patients with SCLC (36 with hi...

A major goal of current hematopoiesis research is to develop in vitro methods suitable for the measurement and characterization of stem cells with long-term in vivo repopulating potential. Previous studies from several centers have suggested the presence in normal human or murine marrow of a population of very primitive cells that are biologically, physically, and pharmacologically different fr...

External beam radiation therapy is an effective therapy for localized prostate cancer, although failures occur at high rates. One variable that may affect the radiosensitivity of prostate tumor cells is their p53 status because this gene controls radiation-induced cell cycle arrest, apoptosis, and the repair of DNA damage. Using a system in which p53 function was conditionally restored to p53-n...

BACKGROUND The aim of the study was to explore the effectiveness of electrochemotherapy (ECT) during the treatment of melanoma patients with BRAF inhibitors. Its effectiveness was tested on BRAF mutated and non-mutated melanoma cells in vitro and in combination with BRAF inhibitors. MATERIALS AND METHODS ECT with bleomycin was performed on two human melanoma cell lines, with (SK-MEL-28) or wi...

Radiation therapy plays a central role in the treatment of glioblastoma, but it is not curative due to the high tumor radioresistance. Phosphatidyl-inositol 3-kinase/protein kinase B (Akt) and Janus kinase (JAK)/signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) pathways serve to block the apoptosis process, keeping cells alive in very toxic environments such as chemotherapy or ionizing...

The role of prolactin (PRL) in supporting the growth of human breast cancer is still unclear. The ability to grow primary breast cancer specimens in the soft agar clonogenic assay in the absence of serum gave us the opportunity to evaluate the growth-promoting effect of PRL and to compare it to that of estradiol in the same tumor samples. PRL was tested both at physiological concentrations (20 ...

OBJECTIVES p16 is known to be an important tumor suppressor gene and is also called MTS1 (multiple tumor suppressive gene 1). Especially in the case of non-small cell lung cancer, it was not expressed in more than 70% of cell lines examined. To determine changes in cell-cycle related proteins and the tumorigenic effect, we, therefore, transfected p16INK4A gene into lung cancer cell lines. MET...