PURPOSE The effect of whole body hyperthermia (WBH) at 41.8-42 degrees C on the cellular immune system is still poorly investigated. The aim of this study was to identify genes that become upregulated in peripheral blood lymphocytes (PBLs) of cancer patients during a combined treatment with WBH and chemotherapy by generating complex arrays of cDNA. METHODS PBLs were obtained from four patient...

Amplification of the MYCN gene in neuroblastomas is a potent biological marker of highly aggressive tumors, which are invariably fatal unless sound clinical management is applied. To determine the usefulness of semi-quantitative differential PCR (SQ-PCR) for accurate quantification of MYCN gene copy number, we evaluated the analytical performance of this method by comparing the results obtained...

In patients with inoperable advanced non-small cell lung carcinomas (NSCLCs), histological subtyping using small-mount biopsy specimens was often required to decide the indications for drug treatment. The aim of this study was to assess the utility of highly sensitive mRNA quantitation for the subtyping of advanced NSCLC using small formalin fixing and paraffin embedding (FFPE) biopsy samples. ...

A spotted fever rickettsia quantitative PCR assay (SQ-PCR) was developed for the detection and enumeration of Rickettsia rickettsii and other closely related spotted fever group rickettsiae. The assay is based on fluorescence detection of SYBR Green dye intercalation in a 154-bp fragment of the rOmpA gene during amplification by PCR. As few as 5 copies of the rOmpA gene of R. rickettsii can be ...

the invention of polymerase chain reaction (pcr) has been a milestone in the history of biological and medical sciences. the applications of pcr have not only completely revolutionised the research in the field of molecular genetics as well as animal and plant biotechnology, but the technique has also proved its relevance and ingenious utility in other fields of forensic sciences, molecular sys...