A clinical audit was conducted for a 4-year period at the Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) Ophthalmology Department in which 61 eyes of adult patients with primary glaucoma underwent trabeculectomies without antimetabolites. At a 2-year follow-up duration, successful trabeculectomies as defined by intraocular pressure below 20 mm Hg without additional glaucoma medication were 62% for primar...

In order to evaluate the specificity of alkyl-lysophospholipid-induced cell destruction, peripheral blood leukocytes from chronic myelogenous leukemia (CML) patients in chronic phase of the disease as well as in blastic crisis have been separated by density centrifugation. These subpopulations, enriched for the different maturation stages, were tested for their sensitivity to alkyl-lysophosphol...

AIM To describe the authors' experience and that in the published literature regarding the use of corticosteroid sparing systemic immunosuppression for patients with corticosteroid dependent optic neuritis not associated with demyelinating disease. METHODS The records of 10 patients from the authors' clinical database, and 38 patients from the published literature with corticosteroid dependen...

Pyrazoloacridine (PA), an acridine congener that has shown selective toxicity in solid tumor cells, full activity against noncycling and hypoxic cells, and promising activity in a recent Phase I trial, is currently undergoing Phase II testing as a solid tumor-selective agent. In the present study, clonogenic assays were used to examine the cytotoxic effects when PA was combined with other antin...

Non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) is characterized by severe resistance to chemotherapy. Here, we demonstrate that A549 adenocarcinoma cells permanently differentiate with the antimetabolites methotrexate (MTX) and gemcitabine (GE) when blocking the resistance mechanism that normally counteracts this process. MTX (1-10 microM) and GE (1 microM) induced growth arrest accompanied by sustained ex...

Little is known concerning the effect of biological antagonists on the concent,ration of tissue metabolites in vivo. Yet such knowledge would seem to be a prerequisite to understanding the physiological action of an antimetabolite. It has been observed that the concentration of some free amino acids in rat liver increased after prolonged treatment of the animals with m-ethionine (I). In the wor...

Investigations with glutamic acid, methionine, and alanine have shown that n-amino acid utilization by lactic acid bacteria may be inhibited by specific antimetabolites (l-4). This has been taken to indicate that a conversion of o-amino acid substrate to the L form precedes its utilization, and that this process may be blocked by an appropriate inhibitor. Both Land n-alanines have been shown to...

Although the phenomenon of acquired resistance has come to play a major role in studies of mechanism of ac tion and in the design of new chemotherapeutic agents, the development of knowledge about collateral sensitivity has received far less attention. Yet this feature of the complex changes which accompany conversion to drug resistance is potentially of importance to chemotherapy, as well as t...