There is no significant association between death receptor 4 (dr4) gene polymorphisms and lung cancer in Turkish population

PubMedID: 23661154Death receptor 4 (DR4) gene is a candidate tumor supressor gene that has a role in apoptotic pathway. It was reported in literature that polymorphisms in DR4 gene lead to susceptibility to many cancers. In accordance with this information, we aimed to investigate the association between G422A, C626G, A683C and A1322G polymorphisms in DR4 gene and lung cancer. We selected 60 patients with lung cancer (LC) and 30 healthy, sex and age matched volunteers randomly. Four polymorhisms, G422A, C626G, A683C and A1322G, in DR4 gene were analyzed with Polymerase Change Reaction (PCR) - Restriction Fragment Lenght Polymorphism (RFLP) and Amplification Refractory Mutation System (ARMS) techniques in both groups. Our results showed that there are no statistically significances between the patients and controls in terms of the G422A, C626G, A683C and A1322G polymorphisms in DR4 gene (p > 0,05). Our findings showed no role of DR4 gene polymorhisms in susceptibility to LC and provide a plausible explanation for DR4 genetic heterogeneity in LC susceptibility. © 2013 Arányi Lajos Foundation.TF2005D1Acknowledgments This work was funded, in part, by a grant from the University of Çukurova, Adana, Turkey (TF2005D1)

Alterations in p16 and p53 genes and chromosomal findings in patients with lung cancer: Fluorescence in situ hybridization and cytogenetic studies

PubMedID: 20444664Background: Chromosomal aberrations and instability of gene(s) are two factors related to the genetic instability of cancer cells. A loss of the tumor-suppressor function of the genes p16 and p53 is the most common event leading to the development of human cancers. Carcinoma of the lung is the leading cause of cancer deaths in the world. Chromosomal abnormalities in lung cancer may provide a valuable clue to the identification of target loci and culminate in a successful search for the major genes. The aim of this study was to investigate (i) alterations of the p16 and p53 genes and (ii) chromosomal aberrations in patients with small cell and non-small cell lung cancer by fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) and cytogenetic studies. Methods: We carried out cytogenetic analysis by Giemsa-banding in 18 cases. FISH probes for the p16 and p53 genes were also used on interphase nuclei to screen the alterations in these genes in lung cancer (LC).Results: We observed a high frequency of losses of the p16 - in 8/18 (44%) - and p53 - in 7/18 (39%) - genes in the cases with LC. A total of 18 patients showed predominantly numerical and structural aberrations. Among these two types, structural aberrations predominated and usually consisted of deletions, breaks, and fragilities in various chromosomes. Both structural and numerical changes were observed in almost all patients. Chromosomes 3 and 1 were found to be most frequently involved in structural abnormalities, followed by chromosomes 6, 9, and 8. Autosomal aneuploidies were also observed to be the most frequent (chromosomes 22, 19, 18, 20, 9, and 17), followed by those of the X and Y chromosomes. The expression of fragile sites was also found to be significantly higher in seven chromosomal regions: 3p14, 1q21, 1q12, 6q26, 9q13, 8q22, and 8q24. Conclusion: Our data confirmed that DNA damage and genomic instability may be factors contributing to the mutation profile and development of lung cancer. The patients who developed lung cancer showed a high frequency of loss of both p16 and p53, in addition to chromosomal aberrations. Tobacco could be a major carcinogenic factor in lung-cancer progression. The loss of p16 and p53, and increased incidence of autosomal aneuploidy and chromatid breaks, along with other chromosomal alterations, can contribute to the progression of the disease. © 2010.Çukurova Üniversitesi: TF2005BAP20This study was supported by a Research fund of the Çukurova University ( TF2005BAP20 )

Recent advances in adsorption heat transformation focusing on the development of adsorbent materials

Adsorption heat transformation (AHT) is an environmentally friendly energy-saving process applied for air conditioning purposes, that is, either for cooling (including also ice making and refrigeration), or heating. AHT is based on the cycling adsorption and desorption of a working fluid in a porous material. When the working fluid is driven to evaporation by the active empty sorbent material, the required heat of evaporation translates into useful cooling in thermally driven adsorption chillers. Driving heat regenerates the empty sorbent material through desorption of the working fluid. The heat of adsorption in the sorbent material and the heat of condensation of the working fluid can be used in the adsorption heat-pumping mode. Thus, adsorption heat transformation contributes to energy-saving technologies. Adsorbent development plays a critical role for the improvement of AHT technologies. Besides silica gel and zeolites as adsorbent materials, which are up to now used in the commercially available AHT devices; especially metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) are getting more attentions in recent years. Composite materials from salts with silica gels, zeolites and MOFs as well as activated carbons have also been researched to contribute to AHT technologies. Reduction of installation/production cost and enhancement of the efficiency of AHT devices need to be achieved to increase the wider usage of AHT

Combined chemotherapy in pleurectomized malignant pleural mesothelioma patients

PubMedID: 8708749A phase II clinical trial of 20 cancer patients who presented with malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) between November 1991 and April 1993 was conducted. Of the histologically proven cases, 16 (80%) were epitheloid and 4 (20%) were mixed type MPM. Patients were treated with mitomycin C, cisplatin, and alpha interferon after pleurectomy. Our schedule consisted of 10 mg/m2 mitomycin C i.v. infusion, 50 mg/m2 cisplatin i.v. infusion, 10 ml Ur-alpha interferon i.m. and 10 ml Ur-alpha interferon i.v. infusion on the first day of treatment Patients were given a mean of 4.5 chemotherapy cycles (range: 2-6). None of the patients showed complete or partial response. Stable disease was observed in 15 patients, while 5 patients had progressive courses. The overall median survival time after chemotherapy was 12 months (range: 3-31 months). Median survival after chemotherapy was 15 months (range: 4-31 months) in the stable disease group (n:15, 75%), and 5 months (range: 313 months) in progressive cases (n:5, 25%). The overall survival rates were 55% [95% Confidence Interval (CI):43% - 88.8%] at one year and 15% (95% CI :5% - 39.1%) at 2 years. Five patients had grade 3 alopecia, three had grade 2 vomiting and nausea, two had grade 2 leukopenia, one had grade 2 cardiotoxicity and another had discoloration on his fingernails. In our multimodal therapy protocol, we found no difference in survival and relapse rates between our combined modal therapy and other single modal therapies in the literature

Combination of chemotherapy and recombinant interferon-alpha in advanced non-small cell lung cancer

PubMedID: 9029165Some studies have shown that the combination of chemotherapy and interferon in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and other solid tumors is feasible and possesses antitumor activity. Our study was aimed at verifying whether the addition of recombinant human interferon alpha (rh-IFN ?) to combined chemotherapy would be able to increase the response rate and survival of patients with NSCLC. Thirty-eight patients with previously untreated advanced NSCLC were evaluated in this study. Median age of patients was 57 years; performance status according to ECOG 0 and 1, 37 pts (97%); stage IIIB, 27 pts (71%); stage IV, 11 pts (29%). Histology was squamous cell carcinoma in 53%, adenocarcinoma 44% and large cell carcinoma 3%. Our schedule consisted of 80 mg/m2 cisplatin IV, 100 mg/m2 etoposide IV, 10 million U rh-IFN ? IM and 10 million U rh-IFN ? TV on first day of treatment, every 3 weeks. None of the patients had complete response. Partial response rate was 34%. Median response duration was 7 months (range 3-19 months), median survival time was 11 months (range 4-41 months). Twenty-nine percent of patients had grade 3 nausea and vomiting, 24% had grade 2 leucopenia, 5% had grade 2 cardiotoxicity, 2.6% had flu-like syndrome. According to these results, in advanced NSCLC, the addition of rh-IFN a did not increase the cisplatin-etoposide combined chemotherapy induced response rate and survival time

Ifosfamide, cisplatin and etoposide (ICE) combined chemotherapy with recombinant human granulocyte colony-stimulating factor support in small cell lung cancer

PubMedID: 9106021This study was aimed to evaluate the effect of ifosfamide, cisplatin and etoposide (ICE) combined chemotherapy in small cell lung cancer (SCLC), and to test the feasibility of adding recombinant human granulocyte colony-stimulating factor (rhG-CSF) to aggressive chemotherapy. Thirty consecutive, previously untreated, patients with SCLC (17 with limited disease and 13 with extensive disease) entered this study. The ICE regimen consisted of ifosfamide (I) 4 g/m2 i.v. with same dose mesna i.v. on first day, cisplatin (C) 25 mg/m2 i.v. on days 1 to 3 and etoposide (E) 100 mg/m2 i.v. on days 1 to 3. A total of 30 MU rhG-CSF i.v. were given from day 7 to 14 if WBC were lower than 3000 x 106/L, neutrophils were lower than 1000 x 106/L. Overall response (OR) rate was 93% with a complete response (CR) rate of 23%. Median survival was 12 months [95% confidence interval (CI): 11-14] and median response duration was 10 months [95% CI: 8-10]. Thirty-seven percent of patients had grade 3 neutropenia, 40% had grade 3 anemia, and 1% had grade 2 thrombocytopenia. Nonhematologic toxicity was mild with nausea and vomiting being the most common. RhG-CSF, which reduced leukopenic nadirs and shortened the neutropenic period, was also well tolerated. This chemotherapy protocol seems to be active, well tolerated and is currently being compared with various conventional chemotherapies

Granulomatous reaction after chemotherapy for Hodgkin's disease

PubMedID: 12163060[No abstract available

Diagnostic value of ferritin in the differential diagnosis of malignant effusions

PubMedID: 10072208The diagnostic value of ferritin in pleural effusions or ascites was studied in 151 samples from 147 patients (four patients had both kind of effusions). Samples (99 pleural effusions, 52 ascites) were evaluated in 4 groups: benign transudate (27 cases), benign nontuberculous exudate (26 cases), tuberculous exudate (47 cases) and malignant exudate (51 cases). Median ferritin levels in effusions were 67 ng/ml, 805 ng/ml, 889 ng/ml, 998 ng/ml and median effusion/serum (E/S) ratios were 0.7, 2.0, 4.9, 3.2 respectively. There was a significant difference between the concentrations of ferritin in malignant (51 cases) and nonmalignant effusions (100 cases) (p 0.05). When compared the all inflammatory effusions (malignant, tuberculous, nontuberculous inflammatory exudates) with noninflammatory effusions (transudate and exudate), we determined a significant difference (p < 0.001). Conclusions: 1) Elevated ferritin concentration in effusions is significant indicators of exudates; 2) It is not good a parameter to discriminate the malignant effusions from the benign ones; 3) They can be useful in the differential diagnosis of the inflammatory exudations from the noninflammatory ones

Designing a New Aluminium Muconate Metal-Organic Framework (MIL-53-muc) as a Methanol Adsorbent for Sub-zero Temperature Heat Transformation Applications

Employing methanol as an adsorbate can enable adsorption-driven heat pumps and chillers to operate at/or achieve temperatures below 0 °C, provided an appropriate pairing adsorbent is made available. By applying the principle of reticular chemistry, an isoreticular twofold expansion of aluminium fumarate was designed and synthesized using trans,trans-muconate as a linker to a new aluminium metal–organic framework (MOF) termed MIL-53-muc. MIL-53-muc is isostructural to the prototypical aluminium terephthalate (Al-MIL-53-BDC) and is therefore built from chains of trans corner-sharing AlO4(OH)2 octahedra connected by muconate linkers to a microporous network with lozenge-shaped one-dimensional pores. Featuring a high BET specific surface area of 1750 m2 g−1, a type V (S-shaped) stepwise methanol adsorption isotherm in a 0.05–0.15 relative pressure range, a high methanol uptake capacity of about 0.5 g g−1 and methanol stability of over 50 assessed ad/desorption cycles, MIL-53-muc is revealed as a promising adsorbent applicable for adsorption-based heat transformation applications. The performance evaluation indicates that high coefficient of performance COPH values above 1.5 could be reached for an evaporator operating at a temperature as low as −5 °C under heat pump conditions, while very low temperatures down to −10 °C could be achieved for refrigeration/ice making with COPC values of up to 0.73 under cooling conditions. This makes MIL-53-muc/methanol outperform most other working pairs for adsorption-based cooling and heating applications under sub-zero temperature conditions. Furthermore, MIL-53-muc is hydrothermally stable and presents a favorable water sorption profile making this material also suitable for autonomous indoor humidity control applications

Air-Con Metal-Organic Frameworks in Binder Composites for Water Adsorption Heat Transformation Systems

Metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) currently receive high interest for cycling water adsorption applications like adsorption heat transformation for air-conditioning purposes. For practical use in adsorption heat pumps (AHPs), the microcrystalline powders must be formulated such that their high porosity and pore accessibility are retained. In this work, the preparation of millimeter-scaled pellets of MIL-160(Al), Al-fumarate (Basolite A520), UiO-66(Zr), and Zr-fumarate (MOF-801) is reported by applying the freeze granulation method. The use of poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) as a binder reproducibly resulted in highly stable, uniformly shaped PVA/MOF pellets with 80 wt % MOF loading, with essentially unchanged MOF porosity properties after shaping. The shaped pellets were analyzed for the application in AHPs by water adsorption isotherms, over 1000 water adsorption/desorption cycles, and thermal and mechanical stability tests. Furthermore, the Al-fum pellets were applied in a fixed-bed, full-scale heat exchanger, yielding specific cooling powers from 349 up to 431 W/kg (adsorbent), which outperforms the current commercially used silica gel grains in AHPs under comparable operating conditions