Usage of cancer chemotherapeutics drugs can be associated with adverse drug reactions. When IgE-mediated drug reactions are formed following administration of a chemotherapeutic drug that is a drug of choice, drug desensitization protocols can be helpful. Hypersensitivity reactions can be allergic or nonallergic, but the clinical manifestations are similar. Rapid drug desensitization (RDD) is e...

Here we report the development of an in vivo system to study the interaction of stem cells with drugs using a tumor model in the adult Drosophila intestine. Strikingly, we find that some Food and Drug Administration-approved chemotherapeutics that can inhibit the growth of Drosophila tumor stem cells can paradoxically promote the hyperproliferation of their wild-type counterparts. These results...

Mutant ras oncogenes and alterations in the mitogenic signaling pathways that they regulate are associated with a wide variety of solid tumors and leukemias for which existing chemotherapeutics have limited utility. Of the possible approaches to inhibit Ras function, much attention has focused on a posttranslational modification, farnesylation, which is required for the subcellular localization...

Targeted delivery of chemotherapeutics and diagnostic agents conjugated to carrier ligands has made significant progress in recent years, both in regards to the structural design of the conjugates and their biological effectiveness. The goal of targeting specific cell surface receptors through structural compatibility has encouraged the use of peptides as highly specific carriers as short pepti...

Stojanovska V, Sakkal S, Nurgali K. Platinum-based chemotherapy: gastrointestinal immunomodulation and enteric nervous system toxicity. Am J Physiol Gastrointest Liver Physiol 308: G223–G232, 2015. First published December 11, 2014; doi:10.1152/ajpgi.00212.2014.—The efficacy of chemotherapeutic treatment of colorectal cancer is challenged by severe gastrointestinal side effects, which include n...

An .upper respiratory tract disease caused by mycoplasma organisms is present in many captive and wild populations of tortoises. The·disease is characterized by a variety of symptoms including conjunctivitis, nasal discharge, wheezing, choanal inflammation, anorexia, and cachexia. Most tortoises show signs of clinical improvement with the use of chemotherapeutics. A variety of different chemoth...

Ovarian cancer is the most lethal gynecological malignancy. Cisplatin and its derivatives are first-line chemotherapeutics, and their resistance is a major hurdle in successful ovarian cancer treatment. Understanding the molecular dysregulation underlying chemoresistance is important for enhancing therapeutic outcome. Here, we review two established pathways in cancer chemoresistance. p53 is a ...

How we develop antibiotics is shaped by how we view infectious disease. Given the urgent need for new chemotherapeutics for tuberculosis and other infectious diseases, it is timely to reconsider a view of infectious disease that is strongly supported by contemporary evidence but that has rarely been applied in antibiotic development. This view recognizes the importance of nonreplicating bacteri...

Colorectal cancer is a significant source of morbidity and mortality in the United States and other Western countries. Oral delivery of therapeutics remains the most patient accepted form of medication. The development of an oral delivery formulation for local delivery of chemotherapeutics in the gastrointestinal tract can potentially alleviate the adverse side effects including systemic cytoto...

Identifying mechanisms of drug action remains a fundamental impediment to the development and effective use of chemotherapeutics. Here we describe an RNA interference (RNAi)-based strategy to characterize small-molecule function in mammalian cells. By examining the response of cells expressing short hairpin RNAs (shRNAs) to a diverse selection of chemotherapeutics, we could generate a functiona...