Immunotherapeutic approaches to manage patients with advanced gastrointestinal malignancies are desired; however, mechanisms to incite tumor-specific immune responses remain to be elucidated. Rose bengal (RB) is toxic at low concentrations to malignant cells and may induce damage-associated molecular patterns; therefore, we investigated its potential as an immunomodulator in colon cancer. Murin...

Aripiprazole (ARP) is an atypical anti-psychotic drug widely used to treat schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. The pharmacological effects of ARP on cancer cells are still poorly understood. In this study, anti-cancer effects of ARP on various malignant tumor cells and its molecular mechanism were further carefully examined by using cell proliferation assay, xenograft mouse model, immunoblottin...

We explored a very interesting gold nanoparticle system-pegylated gold in colloidal solution-and analyzed its uptake by mice colorectal adenocarcinoma CT26 tumor cells and the impact on the cell's response to x-ray irradiation. We found that exposure to polyethylene glycol (PEG) modified ('pegylated') 4.7 ± 2.6 nm gold nanoparticles synthesized by a novel synchrotron-based method enhances the r...

PURPOSE Replication-competent retrovirus (RCR) vectors have been shown to achieve highly efficient and tumor-restricted replicative spread and gene transfer in vivo after direct intratumoral injection in a variety of primary cancer models. In this setting, the intrinsic inability of retroviruses to infect postmitotic normal cells, combined with their unique ability to persist through stable int...

DESI2 (also known as PNAS-4) is a novel pro-apoptotic gene activated during the early response to DNA damage. We previously reported that overexpression of DESI2 induces S phase arrest and apoptosis by activating checkpoint kinases. The present study was designed to test whether combination of DESI2 and IP10 could improve the therapy efficacy in vitro and in vivo. The recombinant plasmid co-exp...

Direct intratumor injection of a disabled infectious single cycle HSV-2 virus encoding the murine GM-CSF gene (DISC/mGM-CSF) into established murine colon carcinoma CT26 tumors induced a significant delay in tumor growth and complete tumor regression in up to 70% of animals. Pre-existing immunity to HSV did not reduce the therapeutic efficacy of DISC/mGM-CSF, and, when administered in combinati...

PURPOSE Radiofrequency ablation (RFA) is a common treatment modality for surgically unresectable tumors. However, there is a high rate of both local and systemic recurrence. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN In this preclinical study, we sought to enhance the antitumor effect of RFA by combining it with huKS-IL2 immunocytokine [tumor-specific monoclonal antibody fused to interleukin-2 (IL2)] in mice bearin...

Colon carcinoma is one of the common malignant tumors and has high morbidity and mortality in the world. Pigment epithelial-derived factor (PEDF) has been found to be the most potent natural inhibitor of angiogenesis and PEDF gene has been extensively used for the therapy of tumors, which suggests a potential approach to the therapy of colon carcinoma. However, the transfer of PEDF gene largely...

Normal and cancerous cells are suggested to have differential utilization of fatty acids and ketone bodies, which could be exploited in cancer therapy. The present study examined the effect of 3-hydroxybutyric acid (3-HBA), which is a ketone body generating acetyl-CoA, and lauric acid (LAA, C12:0), which is a medium-chain saturated fatty acid translocated to mitochondria in a carnitine-independ...