Apoptosis and p53 status predict the efficacy of postoperative administration of UFT in non-small cell lung cancer

To examine whether efficacy of postoperative oral administration of UFT, a 5-fluorouracil derivative chemotherapeutic agent, may be influenced by incidence of apoptosis (apoptosis index) or apoptosis-related gene status (p53 and bcl-2) of the tumour, a total of 162 patients with pathologic stage I non-small cell lung cancer were retrospectively reviewed. UFT was administrated postoperatively to 44 patients (UFT group), and not to the other 118 patients (Control group). For all patients, 5-year survival rate of the UFT group (79.9%) seemed higher than that of the Control group (69.8%), although without significant difference (P = 0.054). For patients with higher apoptotic index, 5-year survival rate of the UFT group (83.3%) was significantly higher than that of the Control group (67.6%, P = 0.039); for patients with lower apoptotic index, however, there was no difference in the prognosis between these two groups. Similarly, UFT was effective for patients without p53 aberrant expression (5-year survival rates: 95.2% for the UFT group and 74.3% for the Control group, P = 0.022), whereas not effective for patients with p53 aberrant expression. Bcl-2 status did not influence the efficacy of UFT. In conclusion, apoptotic index and p53 status are useful factors to predict the efficacy of postoperative adjuvant therapy using UFT. © 2001 Cancer Research Campaign http://www.bjcancer.co

Sequence analysis of human T cell lymphotropic virus type I strains from southern India: gene amplification and direct sequencing from whole blood blotted onto filter paper

Human T cell lymphotropic virus type I (HTLV-I) infection in India has been found to be associated with adult T cell leukaemia/lymphoma (ATLL) and HTLV-I-associated myelopathy/tropical spastic paraparesis (HAM/TSP) among life-long residents of southern India. To examine the heterogeneity of HTLV-I strains from southern India and to determine their relationship with the sequence variants of HTLV-I from Melanesia, 1149 nucleotides spanning selected regions of the HTLV-I gag, pol, env and pX genes were amplified and directly sequenced from DNA extracted from whole blood blotted onto filter paper and from peripheral blood mononuclear cells, obtained from one patient with HAM/TSP, two with ATLL and eight asymptomatic carriers from Andhra Pradesh, Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Sequence alignments and comparisons indicated that the 11 HTLV-I strains from southern India were 99.2% to 100% identical among themselves and 98.7% to 100% identical to the Japanese prototype HTLV-I ATK. The majority of base substitutions were transitions and silent. No frameshifts, insertions, deletions or possibly disease-specific base changes were found in the regions sequenced. The observed clustering of the Indian HTLV-I strains with those from Japan, as determined by the maximum parsimony method, suggested a common source of HTLV-I infection with subsequent parallel evolution. Amplification of DNA from blood specimens collected on filter paper may be useful for the study of other blood-borne pathogens

Newfound Hantavirus in Chinese Mole Shrew, Vietnam

Sequence analysis of the full-length medium segment and the partial small and large segments of a hantavirus, detected by reverse transcription–PCR in lung tissues of the Chinese mole shrew (Anourosorex squamipes) captured in Cao Bang Province, Vietnam, in December 2006, indicated that it is genetically distinct from rodentborne hantaviruses

Extended Generalized Feistel Networks using Matrix Representation

International audienceWhile Generalized Feistel Networks have been widely studied in the literature as a building block of a block cipher, we propose in this paper a unified vision to easily represent them through a matrix representation. We then propose a new class of such schemes called Extended Generalized Feistel Networks well suited for cryptographic applications. We instantiate those proposals into two particular constructions and we finally analyze their security