BACKGROUND Significance of monitoring adalimumab trough levels and anti-adalimumab antibodies (AAA) for disease outcome in Crohn's disease (CD) patients remained unclear. AIM To evaluate the association of adalimumab trough levels and AAA at week 26 with clinical remission at week 52, the effect of azathiopurine on AAA and factors influencing trough levels in CD patients in the DIAMOND trial....

The ability of the hypomethylating agent 5-azacytidine to transform normal primary rat tracheal epithelial cells was determined. A single 24-h exposure to 5-azacytidine resulted in the transformation of rat tracheal epithelial cells at concentrations of the cytosine analogue ranging from 1 to 4 microM. Doses of 5-azacytidine that produced these enhanced growth transformants were nonmutagenic as...

BACKGROUND Measurement of 6-thioguanine nucleotide (6-TGN) concentrations in erythrocytes is widely accepted for use in optimization of thiopurine therapy. Various chromatographic methods have been developed for this purpose. In preliminary experiments we observed a considerable difference between 6-TGN concentrations determined with two widely used methods published by Lennard (Lennard L. J Ch...

Here we report the in vitro selection of an unusual ribozyme that efficiently performs nucleotide synthesis even though it was selected to perform a distinctly different sugar chemistry. This ribozyme, called pR1, when derivatized with ribose 5-phosphate (PR) at its 3' terminus and incubated with 6-thioguanine, produces two interconverting thiol-containing products corresponding to a Schiff bas...

The cytotoxic effects of thiopurine drugs are mostly exerted through the formation of thioguanine nucleotide and its subsequent incorporation into DNA. The 6-thioguanine (6-TG) in DNA can be converted to S6-methylthio-2-aminopurine (2-AP-6-SCH3) and 2-aminopurine-6-sulfonic acid (2-AP-6-SO3H) upon reaction with S-adenosyl-L-methionine and irradiation with UVA light, respectively. Here we prepar...

Figure 1 shows the survival of all patients treated in two consecutive periods at the HSC. Before 1972 patients received a variety of drugs; between 1972 and 1975 daunorubicin and cytosine arabinoside (araC) were used in induction, CNS prophylaxis was given with intrathecal chemotherapy and treatment continued . with 6-mercaptopurine or thioguanine for 2 years. There was no improvement in media...