The role of craniospinal irradiation in adults with a central nervous system recurrence of leukemia.

Background: Although central nervous system (CNS) prophylaxis in patients with leukemia has reduced the incidence of CNS disease recurrence, it still is reported to occur in approximately 5-10% of cases, resulting in a median survival of 6 months. Craniospinal irradiation (CSI) has been shown to improve survival in children who develop a CNS recurrence of acute lymphocytic leukemia (ALL). However, to the authors' knowledge, the role of CSI in adults with a CNS recurrence of leukemia is unknown.

Target delineation and treatment planning in breast conserving therapy.

The increased utilization of computed tomography based treatment planning and intensity modulated radiation therapy for treatment of breast cancer has yielded many potential advantages. Yet, a complete understanding of at risk tissues and avoidance structures is necessary to appropriately utilize such a conformal treatment design. Designing a treatment that maximizes dose homogeneity to the whole breast while minimizing dose to the lung parenchyma, coronary vessels, and myocardium has the potential to improve long-term morbidity and cosmetic outcome.

Intersubunit circular permutation of human hemoglobin.

For many years, human hemoglobin (Hb) isolated from erythrocytes has been investigated as a potential oxygen delivery therapeutic. Advantages with respect to the need for blood typing were balanced with various undesirable properties of cell-free Hb, including cost, overall oxygen affinity, alterations in cooperativity, and ready dissociation into toxic dimeric species. The use of total gene synthesis has resulted in very high levels of functional human Hb expression in Escherichia coli, but there remains a desire for effecting the crosslinking of the hemoglobin tetramer and providing for ready means for increasing the globular molecular weight.