Levofloxacin prophylaxis in patients with newly diagnosed myeloma (TEAMM): a multicentre, double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomised, phase 3 trial.

Background: Myeloma causes profound immunodeficiency and recurrent, serious infections. Around 5500 new cases of myeloma are diagnosed per year in the UK, and a quarter of patients will have a serious infection within 3 months of diagnosis. We aimed to assess whether patients newly diagnosed with myeloma benefit from antibiotic prophylaxis to prevent infection, and to investigate the effect on antibiotic-resistant organism carriage and health care-associated infections in patients with newly diagnosed myeloma.

Vosaroxin and vosaroxin plus low-dose Ara-C (LDAC) vs low-dose Ara-C alone in older patients with acute myeloid leukemia.

The development of new treatments for older patients with acute myeloid leukemia is an active area, but has met with limited success. Vosaroxin, a quinolone-derived intercalating agent has several properties that could prove beneficial. Initial clinical studies showed it to be well-tolerated in older patients with relapsed/refractory disease.

Immunophenotyping of diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) defines multiple sub-groups of germinal centre-like tumours displaying different survival characteristics.

Diffuse large B-cell lymphoma (DLBCL) forms a heterogeneous collection of aggressive non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma in which three principle classes of neoplasia have been defined according to gene expression and immunophenotyping studies. The present investigation sought to examine the immunophenotype of proposed subgroups and relate these to patient survival. A series of 155 DLBCL treated uniformly with anthracycline therapy in clinical trials, were stratified upon the basis of common biomarker expression with combination immunophenotype being related to patient overall survival.

A new subtype-specific monoclonal antibody for IAP-survivin identifies high-risk patients with diffuse large B-cell lymphoma and improves the prognostic value of bcl-2.

Anti-apoptotic factors including IAP-survivin and bcl-2 are involved in carcinogenesis and predict for disease outcome for patients with cancer. We used RT-PCR and specific primers to generate two recombinant IAP-survivin proteins; one encoding for the full-length protein and the second comprising the survivin sequence incorporating amino acids 98 to 142. Both proteins were used to immunize mice and as capture antigens to screen NS1/immune splenocyte hybridoma supernatants for anti-survivin antibody in ELISA assays.

Quantification of CD38 expression in B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia (B-CLL): a comparison between antibody binding capacity (ABC) and relative median fluorescence (RMF).

We have previously shown that quantification of CD38 expression using microbeads of specific antibody binding capacity (ABC) improves the prognostic value of CD38 expression in B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia, particularly for Binet Stage A patients. Quantification of CD38 expression using beads is expensive, time consuming and could be difficult to implement in a routine clinical laboratory. The calculation of relative median fluorescence (RMF) using the median fluorescence intensities of the test and control samples, is even more simply and cheaply obtained by flow cytometry and could be used as an alternative way of quantifying antigen expression.

The prognostic value of CD38 expression and its quantification in B cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia (B-CLL).

A large number of prognostic factors are available to help predict the outcome of patients who present with B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia (B-CLL). These include clinical stage, leukemic cell morphology, lymphocyte doubling time, the pattern of infiltration in bone marrow trephine biopsies, cytogenetic abnormalities, p53 function and serum factors such as beta-2 microglobulin. Two recently described major prognostic factors are immunoglobulin heavy chain variable region (IgVH) mutation status and cell membrane expression of CD38.

Quantification improves the prognostic value of CD38 expression in B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukaemia.

Recent studies have shown that CD38 expressed as a percentage of the antigen positivity can predict prognosis and disease progression in patients with B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukaemia (B-CLL). The present study showed that quantification of CD38 expressed as antibody-binding capacity (ABC) improves the prognostic value of the percentage of CD38 positivity in B-CLL. In a cohort of 81 patients with B-CLL, a level of CD38 expression of > or = 30% and an ABC value of 250 proved statistically valid cut-off points to predict disease progression (% CD38: P=0.