BACKGROUND Breast cancer is the most frequent cancers and is the second leading cause of cancer death among women. Trastuzumab is an effective treatment, the first monoclonal antibody directed against the human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2). To inform the development of other effective treatments we report summary estimates of efficacy of trastuzumab on survival and tumour volume in...

In recent decades, evidence has been accumulating showing the important role of urokinase-type plasminogen activator (uPA) in growth, invasion, and metastasis of malignant tumours. The evidence comes from results with animal tumour models and from the observation that a high level of uPA in human tumours is associated with a poor patient prognosis. It therefore initially came as a surprise that...

BACKGROUND Proteasomal subunit PSMB4 was suggested to be a survival gene in an animal model of hepatocellular carcinoma and in glioblastoma cell lines. In pulmonary adenocarcinoma, a high expression of these genes was found to be associated with poor differentiation and survival. This study investigates the gene expression levels of 26S proteasome subunits in human pulmonary neuroendocrine tumo...

Intradermally transplanted non-immunogenic murine carcinomas measuring 3-6 mm in diameter were exposed to a neodymium-YAG laser beam (1060 nm) over a range of exposure times (0.5-6 seconds) and energy densities (expressed as watts/mm2 exposure field). Subsequent growth of the irradiated tumours was compared with that of untreated tumours. A clear dose-response relationship dependent only on pow...

The fibulins are a family of proteins that are associated with basement membranes and elastic extracellular matrix fibres. This review summarizes findings from studies of animal models of fibulin deficiency, human fibulin gene mutations, human tumours and injury models that have advanced our understanding of the normal and pathological roles of members of this formerly obscure family.

Selenomethionine (Semet) is the major seleno-compound in cereal grains and enriched yeast whereas Se-methylselenocysteine (SeMCYS) is the major seleno-compound in Se-accumulator plants and some plants of economic importance such as garlic and broccoli exposed to excess Se. Animals can metabolize both Semet and SeMCYS. Epidemiological studies have indicated an inverse relationship between Se int...

BACKGROUND To study the neuropathology and selected tumour markers of malignant gliomas, an animal glioma model was developed using the implantation of human glioblastoma clone U87 into rat brains. MATERIALS AND METHODS The U87 cell suspension, or precultured U87 tumour spheroids, were inoculated into the brain of 4-week-old cyclosporin A immunosuppressed Wistar rats. The resulting first gene...

The development of gallium-68 -1,4,7,10-tetraazacyclodecane-1,4,7,10-tetraacetic acid ((68)Ga-DOTA) compounds was made possible due to the chemistry of (68)Ga, which matches the pharmacokinetics of many peptides, specially the chelators DOTA and DOTAderivatives with the formation of stable (68)Ga (3+) complexes. The availability of this tracer from a germanium-68-gallium-68 generator with a rel...