Malignant mesothelioma (MM) is a fatal disease in dire need of therapy. The role of inflammasomes in cancer is not very well studied, however, literature supports both pro-and anti-tumorigenic effects of inflammasomes on cancer depending upon the type of cancer. Asbestos is a causative agent for MM and we have shown before that it causes inflammasome priming and activation in mesothelial cells....

Tumor necrosis factor-related apoptosis-inducing-ligand (TRAIL/Apo-2 ligand) induces apoptosis in the majority of cancer cells without appreciable effect in normal cells. Here, we report the effects of TRAIL on apoptosis in several human breast cancer cell lines, primary memory epithelial cells, and immortalized nontransformed cell lines, and we examine whether chemotherapeutic agents augment T...

Introduction Electroporation is characteristed by the use of short, high voltage pulses which transiently permeabilize the cell membrane. As electroporation can be used to introduce various molecules directly into the cell cytosol, an obvious use has been to introduce chemotherapeutic drugs directly into cancer cells (electrochemotherapy). Many chemotherapeutic drugs are lipophilic and enter ce...

Chemotherapy is one of the main treatment options for cancer. However, chemotherapeutic agents usually suffer from poor pharmaceutical properties that restrict their use. Targeted therapy drugs have been developed to specifi cally target changes in cancer cells that help these cells to grow. Such drugs often work when standard chemotherapeutic drugs do not, they often have less severe side effe...