Phase II Trial Using a Combination of Oxaliplatin, Capecitabine, and Celecoxib with Concurrent Radiation for Newly Diagnosed Resectable Rectal Cancer.

Lessons Learned: Colorectal cancers exhibit a high level of cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) expression with strong preclinical rationale for improved clinical outcomes with COX-2 inhibition. Celecoxib is a COX-2 inhibitor and we have shown that it can be safely combined with capecitabine and oxaliplatin as part of neoadjuvant treatment with radiation therapy (RT) in rectal cancer.There was a significant improvement in skin toxicity with this combination as compared with historical data.

Assessment of the frequency of allelic imbalance in human tissue using a multiplex polymerase chain reaction system.

Genomic instability can generate chromosome breakage and fusion randomly throughout the genome, frequently resulting in allelic imbalance, a deviation from the normal 1:1 ratio of maternal and paternal alleles. Allelic imbalance reflects the karyotypic complexity of the cancer genome. Therefore, it is reasonable to speculate that tissues with more sites of allelic imbalance have a greater likelihood of having disruption of any of the numerous critical genes that cause a cancerous phenotype and thus may have diagnostic or prognostic significance.

Effects of cigarette smoke on degranulation and NO production by mast cells and epithelial cells.

Exhaled nitric oxide (eNO) is decreased by cigarette smoking. The hypothesis that oxides of nitrogen (NOX) in cigarette smoke solution (CSS) may exert a negative feedback mechanism upon NO release from epithelial (AEC, A549, and NHTBE) and basophilic cells (RBL-2H3) was tested in vitro. CSS inhibited both NO production and degranulation (measured as release of beta-hexosaminidase) in a dose-dependent manner from RBL-2H3 cells.

Primary angiomyolipoma of the pancreas.

Angiomyolipoma (AML) is a rare tumor characterized histologically by a mixture of spindle cells, adipose tissue, epithelioid cells, and blood vessels. AML usually occurs in the kidney but can involve the liver and, rarely, other sites. We describe a 74-year-old woman without tuberous sclerosis who presented with spontaneous hemorrhage into a primary AML of the pancreas and underwent curative surgical resection.

Nicorandil inhibits the release of TNFalpha from a lymphocyte cell line and peripheral blood lymphocytes.

Modulation of cytokine release may be of interest in modulating inflammatory diseases. This study determined whether nicorandil, a potassium channel opener, and nitric oxide (NO) donor could inhibit the release of tumour necrosis factor alpha (TNFalpha) from lymphocytes. Nicorandil significantly and dose-dependently inhibited the TNFalpha release from a human Epstein Barr virus-transformed B lymphocyte cell line (EBV-B) and peripheral blood B and T lymphocytes.