In vitro biological performances of phosphorylcholine-grafted ePTFE prostheses through RFGD plasma techniques.

Arterial prostheses made of microporous Teflon (ePTFE) are currently used in vascular surgery as bypasses for small and medium vessels. However, several clinical complications, such as thrombosis, frequently occur in these prostheses when implanted in humans. In this work, an original strategy was developed to improve the hemocompatibility of ePTFE prostheses, based on glow-discharge surface modification followed by chemical grafting of phosphorylcholine, known for its hemocompatible properties.

Antiangiogenic and antitumoral activity of phenyl-3-(2-chloroethyl)ureas: a class of soft alkylating agents disrupting microtubules that are unaffected by cell adhesion-mediated drug resistance.

The development of new anticancer agents with lower toxicity, higher therapeutic index, and weaker tendency to induce resistant phenotypes in tumor cells is a continuous challenge for the scientific community. Toward that end, we showed previously that a new class of soft alkylating agents designed as phenyl-3-(2-chloroethyl)ureas (CEUs) inhibits tumor cell growth in vitro and that their efficiency is not altered by clinically relevant mechanisms of resistance such as overexpression of multidrug resistance proteins, increase in intracellular concentration of glutathione and/or glutathione S-transferase activity, alteration of topoisomerase II, and increased DNA repair. Mechanistic studies have showed recently that the cytotoxic activity of several CEUs was mainly related to the disruption of microtubules.