Acquired resistance to anti-angiogenic tyrosine kinase inhibitors is an important clinical problem in treating various cancers. To what extent acquired resistance is determined by microenvironmental host-factors or by tumor cells directly is unknown. We previously found that tumor cells can become resistant to sunitinib in vitro. Here, we studied to what extent in vitro induced resistance of tu...

Few studies have evaluated Hedgehog (Hh) signaling pathway activation in different types of ovarian tumors including benign, borderline and malignant ovarian tumors. The present study investigated the expression of Hh signaling pathway components (SHH, SMO, PTCH, and GLI1) in 193 ovarian epithelial tumor specimens (including 147 malignant epithelial ovarian cancers, 30 borderline ovarian tumors...

Background: Prior to the introduction of tamoxifen, high dose estradiol was used to treat breast cancer patients with similar efficacy as tamoxifen, albeit with some undesirable side effects. There is renewed interest to utilize estradiol to treat endocrine resistant breast cancers, especially since findings from several preclinical models and clinical trials indicate that estradiol may be a ra...

While more than 70% of breast cancers express estrogen receptor-α (ER+), endocrine therapies targeting these receptors often fail. The molecular mechanisms that underlie treatment resistance remain unclear. We investigated the potential role of glucose-regulated protein 78 (GRP78) in mediating estrogen resistance. Human breast tumors showed increased GRP78 expression when compared with normal b...

We conducted a prospective, meaningful study of extreme low dose of 5-fluorouracil (5FU) as a metronomic agent targeting cancer associated fibroblasts (CAFs) to reverse Multidrug resistance (MDR) by sensitizing cancer associated fibroblasts and down-regulating P-glycoprotein (P-gp). The combination of 5FU and Taxol inhibited resistant KB-8-5 tumor growth by 79% and H460/Tax-R tumor growth by 55...

Introduction Testicular germ cell tumors with somatic-type malignancy, wherein teratomas transform into sarcomas, is drug resistant and has a poor prognosis. Case presentation A 43-year-old man presented left testicular tumor, multiple pulmonary metastases, mediastinal para-aortic lymph node metastases. The were diagnosed as tumors. After bleomycin, etoposide, cisplatin chemotherapy; right uppe...

The treatment of advanced ovarian cancer with taxol is hindered by the development of drug resistance. The cellular target for taxol is the microtubule that is stabilized by the drug. Taxol preferentially binds to the beta subunit of tubulin of which there are six distinct isotypes in mammalian cells. We have used highly specific oligonucleotides and polymerase chain reaction to analyze express...