[Osteosarcoma: biochemical and endocrinological studies as a basis for its pathogenetic treatments].

The paper considers data of the long-term studies of androgen metabolism, baseline serum levels of reproductive steroid hormones and their receptors in the tumor, in the blood concentrations of sex steroid-binding globulin and pituitary hormones, the expression of epidermal growth factor, its receptors and ligands, soluble Fas-antigen, vascular endothelial growth factor, angiogenin, and the content of calmodulin, cAMP in the osteosarcoma in 300 patients aged 14 to 56 years, which were made at the N. N. Blokhin Russian Cancer Research Center, Russian Academy of Medical Sciences.

[The drop in toxicity and the rise in the effectiveness of antineoplastic chemotherapy by correcting the activity of liver monooxygenases: from the experiment to the clinical practice].

The paper reviews both the data available in the literature and the authors' own results of long-term experimental and clinical investigations of the involvement of hepatic monooxygenases (HMO) in the biological activity of antitumor drugs. It reports data of evaluation of HMO activity in pediatric and adult cancer patients, which has shown a decrease in HMO activity in one third of patients without clinical signs of hepatopathy and two thirds of those with toxic hepatic damages after prior chemotherapy. Decreased HMO activity has been found to be stimulated with the enzyme inductor zyxorin.

[Growth receptor factor and steroid hormones: their diagnostic value in differential diagnosis of neoplasms in children].

The distribution of epidermal growth factor receptors (EGFR) and receptors for steroid hormones--androgens (RA), estrogens (RE) and glucocorticoids (RG) was studied in malignant (MT) and benign (BT) tumors in children. The distribution and mean levels of some receptors in normal tissues were statistically different from those in MT and BT. The absence of RA and the high levels of RE > 20 fmol/mg protein and RG > 50 fmol/mg protein were typical of MT whereas BT might be characterized by the high levels of EGFR > 300 fmol/mg protein.