Phase I dose finding study of carboplatin, paclitaxel, and temozolomide in advanced solid tumors.

This phase I study was carried out to evaluate the optimal dose of temozolomide in combination with carboplatin and paclitaxel in patients with advanced solid tumors. Patients with advanced melanoma or small cell lung cancer that could benefit from the combination of carboplatin and paclitaxel were eligible. A standard 3+3 patient cohort dose escalation design was used.

Phase II, randomized trial to compare anastrozole combined with gefitinib or placebo in postmenopausal women with hormone receptor-positive metastatic breast cancer.

Purpose: This phase II randomized trial evaluated the efficacy and tolerability of anastrozole combined with gefitinib or anastrozole with placebo in women with hormone receptor-positive metastatic breast cancer (MBC).

Experimental Design: Postmenopausal women with hormone receptor-positive measurable or evaluable MBC who had not received prior endocrine therapy for this disease stage or who developed metastatic disease during/after adjuvant tamoxifen were eligible. The primary response variable was progression-free survival (PFS) and secondary response variables included clinical benefit rate, objective response rate, overall survival, safety and tolerability, and pharmacokinetics.

Telomere content correlates with stage and prognosis in breast cancer.

Purpose: To evaluate the hypothesis that telomere DNA content (TC) in breast tumor tissue correlates with TNM staging and prognosis.

Experimental Design: Slot blot assay was used to quantitate TC in 70 disease-free normal tissues from multiple organ sites, and two independent sets of breast tumors containing a total of 140 samples. Non-parametric Rank-Sums tests, logistic regression and Cox proportional hazards models were used to evaluate the relationships between TC and tumor size, nodal involvement, TNM stage, 5-year survival and disease-free interval.