Role of chemotherapy in malignant thymoma.

Thymomas and thymic carcinomas, which are rare epithelial tumors arising from the thymus gland, are the most common tumors of the anterior mediastinum. Surgery is the principal treatment and is curative in early stage disease. Radiation therapy, either alone or in combination with chemotherapy, may be an option both in not completely and completely resected disease.

Clinicoprognostic implications of increased serum levels of vascular endothelial growth factor and basic fibroblastic growth factor in early B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukaemia.

To assess the relative merit of increased serum levels of vascular endothelial growth factor and basic fibroblastic growth factor in predicting the risk of disease progression of patients with early B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukaemia we analyzed 81 Binet stage A patients whose sera were taken at the time of diagnosis and evaluated for the presence of vascular endothelial growth factor and basic fibroblast growth factor using an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Serum levels of vascular endothelial growth factor positively correlated with Rai sub-stages (P=0.03), peripheral blood lymphocytosis (P=0.

Serum tissue polypeptide specific antigen (TPS): a complementary tumor marker to CA 15-3 in the management of breast cancer.

The efficacy of CEA and CA15-3 tumor markers in monitoring breast cancer was evaluated in 1365 patients with either benign (n = 534) or malignant (n = 831) breast diseases. Thirty-nine breast cancer patients were monitored before and after neoadjuvant chemotherapy. Three hundred forty-nine patients were monitored during post-surgical follow-up for either a minimum of 5 years or until time of recurrence.

A re-evaluation of carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) as a serum marker for breast cancer: a prospective longitudinal study.

Purpose: Carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) is still a widely used test for monitoring breast cancer, although recent reports discourage its routine use because of low sensitivity. This is a prospective study evaluating the efficacy of CEA and CA 15.3 in monitoring breast cancer.

c-Myb and Bcl-x overexpression predicts poor prognosis in colorectal cancer: clinical and experimental findings.

The aim of this study was twofold: to assess the relationship between c-Myb and Bcl-x expression and to evaluate the prognostic significance of their expression in colorectal carcinoma (CRC) patients. Analysis of tumors from 91 CRC patients for expression of c-Myb and Bcl-x revealed a significant relationship between these two proteins. Kaplan-Meier's analysis showed an increased risk of relapse and death in patients whose tumor specimens displayed high c-Myb levels and Bcl-x positivity.