A screening tool to enhance clinical trial participation at a community center involved in a radiation oncology disparities program.

Purpose: To investigate the effectiveness of a screening tool to enhance clinical trial participation at a community radiation oncology center involved in a National Cancer Institute-funded disparities program but lacking on-site clinical trials personnel.

Patients And Methods: The screening form was pasted to the front of the charts and filled out for all new patients over the 9-month period of the study, during which time five external beam radiation therapy (EBRT) trials and a patient perception study were open for accrual. Patient consent was obtained by assorted personnel at several different sites.

A simple and effective daily pain management method for patients receiving radiation therapy for painful bone metastases.

Purpose: The incidence of painful bone metastases increases with longer survival times. Although external beam radiation therapy (EBRT) is an effective palliative treatment, it often requires several days from the start of treatment to produce a measurable reduction in pain scores and a qualitative amelioration of patient pain levels. Meanwhile, the use of analgesics remains the best approach early on in the treatment course.

A multi-institutional mobility model for regional deployment of Telesynergy telemedicine systems.

The Telesynergy workstation is a remote medical consultation system that provides medical staff with the means to collaborate with one another on cancer research and treatment. There are about 25 systems in use around the world. In order to share the equipment with five community hospital partners in Western Pennsylvania, we designed and implemented a transport system for the workstation.

Evaluation of formative development in the neighborhood cancer care cooperative.

The Radiation Oncology Community Outreach Group (ROCOG) and Neighborhood Cancer Care Cooperative (NCCC) were funded by the National Cancer Institute Radiation Research Program Cancer Disparities Research Partnership program in September 2003. ROCOG/NCCC provides customized, community hospital-based initiatives intended to help close the cancer disparities gap. In our two preceding articles in this issue, we have explored contextual and organizational development, described infrastructure and component programs, and outlined early evaluation strategies.

Creation of community-based research capabilities in the neighborhood cancer care cooperative: administrative infrastructure, program initiatives, and evaluation priorities.

The Radiation Oncology Community Outreach Group (ROCOG) and the Neighborhood Cancer Care Cooperative (NCCC) were developed to address oncology-related health disparities utilizing a community-based, collaborative organizational design. Funded in 2003 by the National Cancer Institute's Cancer Disparities Research Partnership program, ROCOG/NCCC has focused on reducing barriers to care and enhancing the health care system's responsiveness to minority and indigent populations within Southwestern Pennsylvania. This article will describe the component programs that have been developed under this umbrella, as well as the evolved administrative, governance, and evaluation infrastructure that supports these initiatives.

Use of partnership strategies to build radiation oncology disparities research programs in five Western Pennsylvania communities: an organizational case study.

Many cancer treatment and prevention trials as well as surveillance programs suffer from a disproportionately low rate of accrual and a high rate of noncompliance or dropouts of racial minorities and the poor. One suggested strategy to help remediate this trend is to directly involve those targeted populations within the development, implementation, and evaluation of these services. The Radiation Oncology Community Outreach Group (ROCOG) and Neighborhood Cancer Care Cooperative (NCCC) are designed based upon this type of highly collaborative organizational structure, consistent with the general principles of community-based participatory research.

Assessment of "best practice" treatment patterns for a "radiation oncology community outreach group" engaged in cancer disparities outcomes.

Objective: Minority patients with cancer have higher recurrence rates than the general population and are more likely to be treated at community centers where the standard of care has been reported to be inferior to that at academic centers. These issues are being explored by Radiation Oncology Community Outreach Group (ROCOG), a consortium of 5 Community Radiation Oncology centers participating in a National Cancer Institute-funded Disparities Grant. As a quality assurance/quality improvement initiative, this study was undertaken to ensure that treatment was at a "best practice" level.

Serum tumor markers in non-small cell lung cancer. A comparative analysis.

Background: The role of serum tumor markers in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) remains undefined. New proposed markers have seldom been rigorously compared with existing standards. The authors prospectively compared the performance of three new monoclonal antibodies (MoAb) (5E8, 5C7, and 1F10) with the established serum markers carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) and squamous cell carcinoma antigen (SCC).

Digestive tract cell proliferation and food consumption patterns of Ha/ICR mice.

The relationship between the daily pattern of food consumption and the proliferation rate of the oesophagus, stomach, forestomach, small intestine and colon of Ha/ICR mice was examined. Proliferative activity was determined by [3H]TdR incorporation on a wet weight tissue basis, along with selective counting of labelled nuclei. Under conditions of ad libitum feeding with a 12 hr light cycle (lights on at 0600) mice eat most of their food during the dark period.

Renal and haemopoietic proliferative defects as a delayed consequence of cis-platin, adriamycin and daunomycin treatments.

The long-term effects of Adriamycin (ADR), daunomycin (DMN) and cis-dichlorodiammine platinum (II) (DDP) on the ability of murine renal tubular epithelium and erythropoiesis to respond to an acute proliferative stress was investigated. Folic acid (FA) and acute anaemia induced by bleeding were used as acute proliferative stimuli for renal-tubule epithelium and erythropoiesis respectively. The ability of these normal cell-renewal systems to mount a regenerative proliferative response was evaluated by radioisotopic, morphological and gravimetric techniques 4 months after drug treatment.

Proliferative defects in renal and intestinal epithelium after cis-dichlorodiammine platinum (II).

The effects of cis-dichlorodiammine platinum II (DDP) on the intestinal mucosa and the kidney were studied after single and multiple treatments with intervals of 7-45 days. After a single treatment, the jejunal epithelium underwent a transient interruption of cell proliferation followed by a hyperplastic recovery and return to control proliferative rate on Day 7. Subsequent treatments led to suboptimal recovery for all treatment intervals.

Alterations in gastrointestinal steady-state kinetics associated with the growth of experimental tumours.

Changes in the growth kinetics of the intestinal epithelium were observed in mice bearing the Lewis lung carcinoma and the T1699 mammary adenocarcinoma and in rats bearing the H-4-II-E2 hepatoma. Proliferative activity in the jejunal tissue was markedly depressed with increasing tumour burden. Simultaneously, a significant reduction in total crypt cellularity occurred, followed by a reduction in villus height.

Adriamycin-induced delayed erythropoietic injury expressed following anemia stress.

The present studies were undertaken to compare anemia-induced erythropoietic responses in femoral marrows and spleens of mice pretreated with Adriamycin (ADR) or 1-beta-D-arabinofuranosylcytosine with those of untreated age-matched controls. Mice were bled 45 or 120 days after drug treatment. The erythropoietic response to bleeding was quantitated by morphological, gravimetric, and radioiron methods 48 hr after bleeding.

ICRF-159 enhancement of radiation response in combined modality therapies. II. Differential responses of tumour and normal tissues.

The combined effect of the chemotherapeutic agent ICRF-159 and radiation on the proliferative status of tumor/normal systems has been evaluated using the Lewis lung tumour in BDF1 mice. We have previously shown that a 25 mg/kg dose of ICRF-159, given at 3h intervals X4 before irradiation, significantly enhanced tumour growth retardation relative to a single dose of 100 mg/kg before irradiation. Whilst both single and fractionated drug treatments produced a transient inhibition of cell proliferation, comparisons of the temporal recovery from the antiproliferative effect of radiation in both tumour and intestinal epithelium suggested that single acute doses of ICRF-159 fail to potentiate the radiation response of either tissue.

ICRF-159 enhancement of radiation response in combined modality therapies. I. Time/dose relationships for tumour response.

The combined effect of the chemotherapeutic agent ICRF-159 and irradiation were evaluated using the Lewis lung tumour (LL). At a daily dose of 25 mg/kg, ICOF given alone prevented the progressive growth of LL. Daily pretreatment also potentiated the effects of radiation (600 rad) on tumour growth, provided the pretreatment kinetics of the tumour permitted a response to radiation alone.

Influence of adriamycin and adriamycin-radiation combination on jejunal proliferation in the mouse.

The influence of adriamycin and adriamycin-radiation combinations on posttreatment proliferative activity of the mouse jejunum was examined by measuring [3H]thymidine incorporation. Single doses of 5 or 10 mg/kg produced a transient reduction in the proliferative activity, while 1 mg/kg had little effect. After 10 mg/kg, there was a rapid decrease in the number of mitotic figures, followed by a gradual decrease in the number of and rate of DNA synthesis in S-phase cells.