A series of bifunctional alkylators were tested against the genotypically and phenotypically heterogeneous continuous human medulloblastoma cell lines, TE-671, Daoy, and D283 Med in vitro and against TE-671 and Daoy growing as s.c. and intracranial xenografts in athymic mice. Drugs tested included melphalan, cyclophosphamide, iphosphamide, phenylketocyclophosphamide, thiotepa, 1,3-bis(2-chloroe...

High dose chemotherapy with autologous stem cell transplantation (ASCT) improves outcomes in patients 65 years of age or less with multiple myeloma. Survival and costs in a cohort of 16 patients who received melphalan and prednisone as part of a clinical trial were compared with those of 36 patients referred to our centre for consideration of ASCT. In the transplant group, survival and costs we...

BACKGROUND Intra-arterial administration of melphalan chemotherapy has shown promise in the treatment of retinoblastoma. This report describes our results using superselective intra-arterial melphalan in patients with newly diagnosed retinoblastoma and those who were treated for progression after systemic chemotherapy. METHODS This is a retrospective review of all retinoblastoma patients trea...

Immunological detection of melphalan adducts on DNA should permit new types of clinical and experimental investigations. Five cloned rat hybridoma cell lines were derived, each producing an antibody that bound to DNA alkylated with melphalan (phenylalanine mustard) but not to normal DNA. Further characterization of one melphalan specific antibody (MP5/73) used a competitive fluorogenic enzyme-l...

There is still no ideal treatment for multidrug resistant multiple myeloma, looking for drugs which can reverse chemotherapy resistance and enhance curative effects of chemotherapy drugs becomes a problem that needs to be solved urgently. Poly(ADP-ribose) polymerase inhibitors appear to be an important tool for medical therapy of several malignancies. In the present study, we investigated the p...

Recently, recombinant DNA methods have been successfully applied to interferon production, making adequate quantities available for both in vitro and in vivo testing. Although interferons are in the class of biologic response modifiers, they do have some direct cytotoxic effects on human tumor cells that can be quantitated in vitro with the colony-forming assay. In the clonogenic assay, RPMI-82...

Melphalan (i.-phenylalanine mustard, L-PAM, alkeran; molecular weight, 305,000) is transported across tumor cell membranes and the blood-brain barrier by the large neutral amino acid (LNÕA) transport system. Normally, plasma LNAA levels are high enough and the affin ity low enough that this system does not transport much melphalan into the brain. However, plasma amino acids can be reduced by f...

Human leukemic HL60 cells were selected for resistance to alkylating agents by stepwise exposure to increasing concentrations of L-phenylalanine mustard (melphalan). The resulting resistant cell line (R-HL60) was 4-fold resistant (melphalan IC50 value, 27.84 +/- 4.2 microM) to melphalan compared with parental HL60 cells (melphalan IC50 value, 6.9 +/- 1.78 microM). Nuclear extracts from R-HL60 c...

A patient with a severe remote-effect polyneuropathy and other paraneoplastic features of osteosclerotic myeloma improved dramatically with melphalan and prednisone treatment. Serial electrodiagnostic studies provided an objective means of following the response to therapy and documented the improvement. We believe this represents the first reported patient with multifocal osteosclerotic myelom...

A patient suffering from multiple myeloma developed pulmonary fibrosis, of a type known to be associated wtih busulphan, whilst being treated with Melphalan. The possible role of Melphalan as the causative agent is discussed. Reference is made to other possible aetiological agents and the reasons for their exclusion are discussed.