Successful antiestrogen treatment in patients with tamoxifen-responsive breast tumors is often followed by an outgrowth of tumors cells that are antiestrogen resistant, implying that estrogen-dependent tumors can become estrogen-independent. In an effect to mimic this progression, we have transfected fibroblast growth factor 4 into MCF-7 cells, a human breast carcinoma cell line that is estroge...

Recombinant immunotoxins are chimeric proteins composed of the Fv portion of a tumor-specific antibody fused to a toxin. SS1P (CAT-5001) is an immunotoxin composed of an antimesothelin Fv fused to a 38-kDa portion of Pseudomonas exotoxin A. Immunotoxins have been shown to be active in lymphomas and leukemias, but are much less active against solid tumors. We recently reported that Taxol and oth...

Antiangiogenic therapy based on blocking the actions of vascular endothelial growth factor-A (VEGF) can lead to "normalization" of blood vessels in both animal and human tumors. Differential expression of VEGF isoforms affects tumor vascular maturity, which could influence the normalization process and response to subsequent treatment. Fibrosarcoma cells expressing only VEGF120 or VEGF188 isofo...

In vivo models that recapitulate oncogene-dependent tumorigenesis will greatly facilitate development of molecularly targeted anticancer therapies. We have developed a model based on activating mutations in c-KIT in gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs). This model comprises murine tumors of FDC-P1 cell lines expressing c-KIT mutations that render the tumors either responsive (V560G) or resis...

gestational trophoblastic neoplasia ( gtn) is one of the most common gynecologic tumors in our country. despite development of effective chemotherapy: some cases remain resistant and if there is only focus of tumor, resection would be indicated.we present a young woman with stage 1 persistant gtn showing no response to chemotherapy. transvaginal sonograpy revealed trophoblastic tissue in the ut...

Among the many proteases associated with human cancer, seprase or fibroblast activation protein alpha, a type II transmembrane glycoprotein, has two types of EDTA-resistant protease activities: dipeptidyl peptidase and a 170-kDa gelatinase activity. To test if activation of gelatinases associated with seprase could be involved in malignant tumors, we used a mammalian expression system to genera...