Oncology
Chapters
page 1 of 4 pages | next »A Step Deep on Hyperthermia, Hypoxia and Chemotherapy Interactions
Giammaria Fiorentini,* Ugo De Giorgi, Maurizio Cantore, Andrea Mambrini and Stefano Guadagni
Cancer physiology can be a new significant target for therapy. Nonsurgical approaches to cancer treatment, primarily radiation therapy and chemotherapy, are almost exclusively based on agents that kill cells. The main problem with these current treatments, however, is that they do not have specif...
Antitumoral Effects of Lipids A, Clinical Studies
Marc Bardou and Daniéle Reisser
Cancer remains the second leading cause of death, after cardiovascular diseases, in industrialized countries. The first goal to achieve is to prevent cancer occurrence or to diagnose it at an early and curable stage. Some screening strategies have been developed, with controversies across countries,...
Apoptosis and Cancerogenesis of Basal Cell and Squamous Cell Carcinoma
Peter Erb, Jingmin Ji, Marion Wernli and Stanislaw A. Büchner
Basal cell carcinoma (BCC) and squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) are the most frequent tumors in the Caucasian population. The formation of these tumors is a consequence of ong term UV-exposure of the skin. UV-light induces DNA damage in cells. If the damaged DNA cannot be repaired or the DNA damag...
Apoptosis and Pathogenesis of Melanoma and Nonmelanoma Skin Cancer
Peter Erb, Jingmin Ji, Erwin Kump, Ainhoa Mielgo and Marion Wernli
Skin cancers, i.e., basal cell carcinoma (BCC), squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) and melanoma, belong to the most frequent tumors. Their formation is based on constitutional and/or inherited factors usually combined with environmental factors, mainly UV‑irradiation through long term sun exposure....
Cell Cycle Deregulation in Breast Cancer: Insurmountable Chemoresistance or Achilles’ Heel?
Laura Lambert and Khandan Keyomarsi
Deregulation of the G1 cyclin, cyclin E, has been shown to be both the most powerful predictor of prognosis in early stage breast cancer as well as a significant determinant of tumor aggressiveness. It may also contribute to treatment failure due to chemoresistance. Because some form of cell cycle d...
Complementary Techniques: Laser Capture Microdissection—Increasing Specificity of Gene Expression Profiling of Cancer Specimens
Giovanni Esposito
Recent developments in sensitive genome characterization and quantitative gene expression analyses that permit precise molecular genetic fingerprinting of tumoral tissue are having a huge impact on cancer diagnostics. However, the significance of the data obtained with these techniques strictl...
Conformation and Supramolecular Structure of Lipid A
Klaus Brandenburg and Ulrich Seydel
In recent years, lipid A as ‘endotoxic principle’ of bacterial lipopolysaccharide (LPS) and derivatives thereof have become increasingly important in the field of biomedical application such as for vaccination or as therapeutical, e.g., anti‑tumor agent. For an understanding of these biologica...
Cytogenetics of Basal Cell Carcinoma and Squamous Cell Carcinomas
Melanie A. Carless, Kevin J. Ashton and Lyn R. Griffiths
Cytogenetic analysis is a powerful tool that allows analysis of chromosomal aberrations associated with diseased states. In particular, a combination of cytogenetic techniques has allowed the identification of aberrations associated with cancer development, including cancers of the skin. This cha...
Cytogenetics of Melanoma and Nonmelanoma Skin Cancer
Melanie A. Carless and Lyn R. Griffiths
Cytogenetic analysis of melanoma and nonmelanoma skin cancers has revealed recurrent aberrations, the frequency of which is reflective of malignant potential. Highly aberrant karyotypes are seen in melanoma, squamous cell carcinoma, solar keratosis and Merkel cell carcinoma with more stable karyotyp...
Cytoreduction, Peritonectomy and Hyperthermic Antiblastic Peritoneal Perfusion for the Treatment of Peritoneal Carcinomatosis
Michele De Simone* and Marco Vaira
Peritoneal carcinomatosis may present as synchronous disease or like evolution of gastrointestinal or female genital tumors (including pseudomyxoma peritonei, a variable malignancy myxoid tumor, arising from the appendix). It is also the common way of presentation of primitive peritoneal tumors ...
Effects of Local and Whole Body Hyperthermia on Immunity
Gian Franco Baronzio,* Roberta Della Seta, Mario D’Amico, Attilio Baronzio, Isabel Freitas, Giorgio Forzenigo, Alberto Gramaglia and E. Dieter Hager
“Around every tumor there is a patient” – Black, Natl Cancer Inst. Monogr. 1972; 35:276. Abstract In this review, we summarized the historical and experimental basis of cancer immunity and the role of fever and of artificial elevation of temperature on immunity. The interactions of heat in vitro...
EGF Receptor in Breast Cancer Chemoresistance
Robert B. Dickson and Tushar Baran Deb
Acquisition of resistance of breast cancer to chemotherapy is commonly associated with progression of the disease to increased metastatic spread. Although early studies on this problem examined the possible roles of chemotherapy drug metabolism and efflux by resistant breast cancer cells, more recen...
Epidemiology of Melanoma and Nonmelanoma Skin Cancer—The Role of Sunlight
Ulrike Leiter and Claus Garbe
Melanoma and nonmelanoma skin cancer (NMSC) are now the most common types of cancer in white populations. Both tumor entities show an increasing incidence rate worldwide but a stable or decreasing mortality rate. The rising incidence rates of NMSC are probably caused by a combination of increased su...
Estrogen Receptors in Resistance to Hormone Therapy
Matthew H. Herynk and Suzanne A.W. Fuqua
Estrogen and its receptors a and b (ERa and ERb) play a major role in tumor progression and approximately two-thirds of breast cancers express these functional receptors. Thus, the ER is a major target for current and developing therapies. Although most ER-positive tumors initially respond to hormon...
Extreme Whole-Body Hyperthermia with Water-Filtered Infrared-A Radiation
Alexander von Ardenne and Holger Wehner
The testing of various methods to realise extreme whole-body hyperthermia (eWBH) finally led to the utilisation of radiative systems. Among these the application of water-filtered infrared-A radiation (wIRA) distinguished itself by its high penetration, all the way into the capillary bed of the s...
Fever, Pyrogens and Cancer
Ralf Kleef* and E. Dieter Hager
The observation, that cancer patients who experienced a feverish period after surgery survived significantly longer than patients without fever and the fact, that spontaneous tumor remission was observed mostly after a fever period, was the rationale for the artificial induction of fever (“fever...
Future Perspectives of Interstitial and Perfusional Hyperthermia
Gian Franco Baronzio,* Michele De Simone, Gianmaria Fiorentini, Salvatore D’Angelo, Giovanni Visconti and E. Dieter Hager
Recent developments in thermal ablation and perfusion hyperthermia have expanded the treatment options of patients with certain cancer. Initially thermal ablation was applied to liver tumor, later its application has been extending for treating focal malignancies confined in other organs such as:...
Gene Expression Profiling in Malignant Lymphomas
Sarah E. Henrickson, Elena M. Hartmann, German Ott and Andreas Rosenwald
The practice of clinical medicine and the process of biomedical research have been transformed by the decoding of the human genome. The use of DNA microarrays to find gene expression patterns in disease and biological processes has already begun to have a significant impact on modern medicine. The...
Gene Profiling for the Prediction of Tumor Response to Treatment: The Case of Immunotherapy
Vladia Monsurrò and Francesco M. Marincola
Although anticancer immune responses can occur, the biological mechanisms responsible for them remain largely unexplained. Immunologists have extensively studied specific interactions between immune and cancer cells and have identified cofactors that may modulate the effectiveness of such intera...
Health Initiatives for the Prevention of Skin Cancer
Rüdiger Greinert, Eckhard W. Breitbart, Peter Mohr and Beate Volkmer
Skin cancer represents the most common type of cancer in the white population worldwide and the incidence has dramatically increased during the last decades. UV radiation is the most important risk factor responsible for this development. Socio‑economical and cultural changes in behaviour of l...
Histology of Epithelial Skin Tumors
J. Reichrath, K. Querings
Although this topic is still a matter of debate, actinic keratoses can now be considered to represent early squamous cell carcinomas in situ.1,10,24,41 However, it appears that only a small proportion of actinic keratoses will develop into an invasive squamous cell carcinoma. Regression of some c...
Histology of Melanoma and Nonmelanoma Skin Cancer
Cornelia S.L. Mueller and Jörg Reichrath
According to the WHO classification of skin tumours from 2006 actinic keratoses are very common intraepidermal neoplasm of sun‑damaged skin with variable atypia of the epidermal keratinocytes. Main cause of these changes is chronical exposition to UVB light, but Aks are also observed following...
Hyperthermia and Angiogenesis: Results and Perspectives
Cristina Roca and Luca Primo
Hyperthermia (HT) is a promising method for cancer treatment when combined with radiotherapy or chemotherapy. The molecular mechanisms of anti-tumoral efficacy of HT are not well understood. Besides its direct cytotoxic effect on tumor cells, HT injures the normal microvasculature and, in particu...
Hyperthermia and Radiotherapy in the Management of Prostate Cancer
Sergio Villa
Carcinoma of the prostate has been included in the top five big killer neoplasms at today. The management of advanced disease is still a problem in oncology. Starting from the begging of eighties, hyperthermia has been associated to radiotherapy with the aim to increase the local control. This i...
Hyperthermia, Physics, Vector Potential, Electromagnetic Heating: A Primer
Ugo Cerchiari
Heating methodologies of restricted and specific body volumes as means to treat cancer are critically examined from the physical point of view. Difficulties in the application of heating methodologies are considered in relation to the different means giving more space to the means more suitable f...
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