Gene therapy for meningioma: improved gene delivery with targeted adenoviruses.

Object: Due to their surgical inaccessibility or aggressive behavior, some meningiomas cannot be cured with current treatment strategies. Gene therapy is an emerging strategy for the treatment of brain tumors, which the authors investigated to determine whether adenoviruses could be used for gene transfer in meningioma cells.

Methods: The presence of the high-affinity Coxsackievirus and adenovirus receptor (CAR) for adenovirus type 5, as well as endothelial growth factor receptor (EGFR) and alpha, integrins (ITGAVs), were analyzed in primary tumors by using immunohistochemical studies and in primary meningioma cell cultures by using fluorescence-activated cell sorting.

Prognostic value of morphometry in patients with normal breast tissue or usual ductal hyperplasia of the breast.

Women with usual ductal hyperplasia have a relative risk of 1.6-1.9 of subsequent breast cancer development.

Similarity in expression of cell cycle proteins between in situ and invasive ductal breast lesions of same differentiation grade.

There is increasing evidence that there are different progression routes leading to invasive breast cancer, depending on histology and differentiation grade. The aim of this study was to determine alterations in the expression of proteins involved in proliferation and apoptosis in non-invasive and invasive ductal breast lesions. Immunohistochemistry was performed on 106 usual ductal hyperplasias (UDH), 61 DCIS lesions and 53 invasive ductal breast carcinomas.

Combined targeting of adenoviruses to integrins and epidermal growth factor receptors increases gene transfer into primary glioma cells and spheroids.

Adenoviral-mediated gene transfer is suboptimal in human glioma and limits in vivo gene therapy approaches. There is a need for targeted vectors able to enhance gene transfer into the tumor as well as to lower the viral load in the surrounding normal tissues. We evaluated primary human tumor samples by immunohistochemistry and fluorescence-activated cell sorter for expression of the Coxsackie-adenovirus receptor and other antigens with potential utility to redirect adenoviruses (Ads) to gliomas.

Balance of cell proliferation and apoptosis in breast carcinogenesis.

We determined the mitotic and apoptotic index through the spectrum of pre-invasive ductal breast lesions to invasive carcinoma in search of disturbances in the proliferation/cell death balance in breast carcinogenesis. Seventy-two pure pre-invasive ductal breast lesions (without invasive carcinoma) and 103 invasive breast carcinomas were used. The numbers of mitotic and apoptotic cells were microscopically counted in hematoxylin and eosin stained sections (MI and AI, respectively), and the ratio of the values of MI and AI was calculated for each individual case (M/A index).