Faculty Bibliography

The study was a Phase II randomized study to evaluate the efficacy of new agents for the treatment of advanced gastric carcinoma. Patients were randomized to receive single agent chemotherapy with mitoxantrone, etoposide, aclacinomycin-A or spirogermanium. The patients were stratified by prior use of chemotherapy, prior doxorubicin use and ECOG performance status. Patients with a history of cardiac disease or prior doxorubicin exceeding a dose of 400 mg/m2 were restrictively randomized to sopirogermanium or etoposide only. One hundred and fourteen patients were registered for the study. Among 98 evaluable patients there were only two partial responses (both in the etoposide arm), and one complete response in the mitoxantrone arm. The median survival on the study was 3.3 months. One hundred and six patients were analyzable for toxicity. There were four treatment-related deaths and four life-threatening toxicities. Because of low response rates and relatively high toxicities the studied compounds were not deemed worth further investigation for advanced gastric cancer

Theophylline, a methylxanthine commonly used as a treatment for asthma, has been shown to induce apoptosis in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) cells both in vitro and in vivo. We have treated three advanced CLL patients with theophylline, and seen responses in two. The clinical courses of the responders are presented, and the literature concerning theophylline as therapy for CLL is reviewed

A family with erythroleukemia is presented, in which father and son were diagnosed at the same age, but 20 years apart, with almost identical clinical and morphological features of the disease. No environmental factors were identified. The karyotypic abnormalities of the bone marrow blasts in the son demonstrated 2 major clones, involving chromosomes 5 and 7, as well as 8, 13, 16 and 21. Both patients demonstrated a poor response to chemotherapy. Previously described families with erythroleukemia are reviewed with available specific karyotypic aberrations

Four patients with acute myelogenous leukaemia (AML), who developed isolated thrombocytopenia after anti-leukaemic chemotherapy, were treated with cyclosporine A and showed significantly enhanced platelet recovery. All four patients demonstrated decreased bone marrow megakaryocytes without dysplastic features, absence of identifiable peripheral autoimmune platelet destruction or cytogenetic evidence of secondary myelodysplasia. The duration of response to cyclosporine A ranged from 6 days to 40 months. The mechanism of cyclosporine A-induced platelet recovery may include inhibition of negative modulators and induction of thrombopoietic cytokines mediated by bone marrow regulatory cells