P-glycoprotein activity predicts outcome in childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia.

Treatment of children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is based on P-glycoprotein (P-gp)-dependent cytostatics. We assessed the P-gp function in blast cells as a possible prognostic factor and its influence on the overall survival. P-gp function was measured using the verapamil-sensitive Rhodamine efflux.

[X-linked agammaglobulinemia (XLA) associated with agranulocytosis--case report].

In this case study authors presented the clinical characteristics of X-linked agammaglobulinemia (XLA) associated with agranulocytosis diagnosed in a 2-year-old boy. Affected child lacked circulating mature B cells, presented low levels of serum immunoglobulins, but did not suffer from recurrent bacterial infections. XLA is a primary immunodeficiency caused by a defective tyrosine kinase (Btk) in B cells.

Heterogeneous susceptibility to spontaneous and induced apoptosis characterizes two related transplantable melanomas with different biological properties.

A family of phenotypically and biologically different transplantable hamster melanomas was derived from a single tumor more than 40 yr ago. In this work, we were seeking the differences between the abilities of the cells from two biologically heterogeneous (melanotic and amelanotic) members of this family to undergo spontaneous or camptothecin-induced apoptosis. We studied these differences by looking at three important features of the apoptotic process, i.