Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, Peking University First Hospital, Beijing, China.

Long-term risk of gynecological malignancies in organ transplantation patients has increased compared with that of the general population owing to the use of immunosuppressive agents. Treatment, especially chemotherapy, in these patients should take into consideration their renal function and the effects of immunosuppressive agents. We here present two case reports of patients with chemotherapy-treated gynecological malignancies who had previously received organ transplantation. The first case, a rare occurrence of simultaneous carcinomas of the uterine corpus and ovary, is the first such report in the English literature describing chemotherapy for concurrent serous papillary ovarian carcinoma and endometrioid endometrial carcinoma in a renal transplant patient. The second case report, describing chemotherapy for cervical cancer following two organ transplantation, also rare, is the first such report in the English literature and the first report of cervical cancer after heart-kidney transplantation.

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Department of Otolaryngology, Tokyo Medical University, Tokyo, Japan.

Conclusion: A concomitant treatment of intra-arterial chemotherapy and radiation therapy is a promising therapeutic option for oropharyngeal cancers. Objectives: Treatment for oropharyngeal cancer has been far from standardized because of its pathophysiologic complexity and its low incidence. In our department, T1 stage tumors with N0 or N1 status are primarily treated surgically, while T1 tumors with N2 or more advanced lymph node involvement are additionally treated with concomitant chemoradiotherapy (CRT). Treatment for T2, T3, and T4 tumors is based on CRT, but surgery is also performed if necessary. Patients and methods: The study included 73 patients with squamous cell carcinomas of the lateral oropharyngeal wall who received first-line therapy at our department between May 1993 and October 2003. Results: The 5-year disease-specific survival by disease stage was 100% for stage I, 90.9% for stage II, 88.2% for stage III, 69.8% for stage Iva, and 22.2% for stage IVb. The overall 5-year disease-specific survival was 71.8%, and the overall 5-year crude survival was 54.1%.

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Laboratory Center for Diagnostics, Dalian Medical University, Dalian, 116023, Liaoning, China.

Microchip-based systems have many desirable characteristics and can be used in much cellular biochemical analysis. Glucose-regulated protein 78 (GRP78), an endoplasmic reticulum chaperone, has a critical role in chemotherapy resistance of some cancers. This work aimed at analyzing the correlation between the expression of GRP78 and an anticancer drug, topoisomerase II inhibitor-VP-16, in human lung cancer cell line NCI-H460 using this microchip-based system. The cells were cultured on a PDMS chip, the expression of GRP78 at both protein and mRNA levels for the cells under the condition with or without the induction of A23187 were assayed by immunofluorescence and chip electrophoresis, respectively. Then the cells were treated by VP-16, percentages of apoptosis and the cycle distributions of the cells were detected by flow cytometry. The cells cultured on the PDMS attached and spread well to micro-channels with high viability. Compared with the non-induced cells, the expression of GRP78 at both protein and mRNA levels for the A23187-induced cells were increased greatly. After treatment by VP-16, the percentage of apoptotic cells decreased nearly threefold for the A23187-induced cells in contrast to the non-induced cells (13.15 +/- 3.84% versus 34.03 +/- 11.45%), and the cells distributed in S phase reduced dramatically (11.96 +/- 1.27% versus 20.76 +/- 3.05%) whereas in G(1) phase increased greatly (74.16 +/- 0.95% versus 57.06 +/- 4%). GRP78 is correlated to the resistance to VP-16 in human lung cancer cell line. The microchip-based system has the potential application and feasibility for cell culture and its functional research.

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Hematology/Oncology Section, Department of Internal Medicine, Brody School of Medicine, East Carolina University, Greenville, NC 27834, USA. sigounasg@ecu.edu

Organ toxicity induced by chemotherapeutic drugs is a serious obstacle in the effective treatment of patients suffering from cancer and autoimmune disease. A strong association exists between pulmonary toxicity, particularly fibrosis, and chemotherapeutic drugs. Attempts have been made to identify compounds capable of suppressing fibrosis. In addition to its erythropoietic activity, erythropoietin (EPO) has been shown to have effects on nonhemopoietic cells. Therefore, we postulated that EPO may exert beneficial effects on lung tissue during chemotherapy. To test our hypothesis, we investigated pulmonary changes caused by bleomycin, a fibrosis-inducing agent, in animals treated with the drug alone and in combination with EPO. Fibrosis, cellular alterations and structural changes were assayed by blind analysis of the lung sections. A 6-fold decrease in the number of prominent endothelial cells–suspected to be indicative of cellular activation and inflammatory response–was observed in lung sections derived from mice treated with bleomycin and EPO compared to animals injected with bleomycin alone (p < 0.008). Additionally, there was twice the number of ICAM1-positive endothelial cells in animals treated with bleomycin alone compared with the number in the bleomycin and EPO-treated group (p < 0.05). Alveolar mononuclear phagocytic hyperplasia was reduced by as much as 100% in animals treated with bleomycin and EPO compared to animals treated with bleomycin alone (p < 0.03). Finally, a 5-fold decrease in interstitial fibrosis was observed in lung sections obtained from animals treated with bleomycin and EPO (p < 0.02). We conclude that EPO can ameliorate drug-induced fibrosis and endothelial damage caused by chemotherapeutic agents. (c) 2008 Wiley-Liss, Inc.

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