Radiotherapy is the most common treatment of cancer. It is also practised in combination with chemotherapy or immunotherapy. Although many cases are successfully treated, failures in local control do occur and even a modest improvement in the relative radiosensitivity of tumour cells would result in a substantial therapeutic gain. In addition, the presently practised fractionated dose schedule ...

Pancreaticoduodenectomy is performed on carefully selected patients as part of a protocol-based clinical research program emphasizing the importance of multimodality management for patients with potentially resectable adenocarcinoma of the pancreatic head. Treatment schemas emphasize the importance of minimizing toxicity and treatment duration, while attempting to improve therapeutic efficacy. ...

No significant cytotoxic effect was observed in WKAH rat cells by the treatment of wortmannin, a radiation sensitizer, at concentrations lower than 30 microM for 24 hr. The relative surviving fractions of LEC rat cells were slightly, but significantly, lower than those of WKAH rat cells at each concentration of wortmannin. When the wortmannin-treated WKAH rat cells were X-irradiated, the relati...

Radiation therapy performs an important function in cancer treatment. However, resistance of tumor cells to radiation therapy still remains a serious concern, so the study of radiosensitizers has emerged as a persistent hotspot in radiation oncology. Along with the rapid advancement of nanotechnology in recent years, the potential value of nanoparticles as novel radiosensitizers has been discov...

A class of radiosensitizers is discussed which irreversibly inhibits the repair of x-ray-induced single-strand breaks in DNA. Such agents are active when added after irradiation and potentiate x-ray-induced killing in rec + strains of E. coli K-12, but have little effect on the viability of x-irradiated recA strains which are deficient in their ability to repair x-ray-induced single-strand brea...

The new bioreductive drug 3-amino-1,2,4-benzotriazine 1,4-dioxide (SR 4233) shows a high selective cytotoxicity for hypoxic cells, both in vitro and in tumors in vivo. In the present experiments, we have tested the hypothesis that this selective killing of hypoxic cells might be exploited by taking advantage of the fluctuating hypoxia in tumors by use of a multidose regimen of SR 4233 with mult...

Hyperbaric oxygen has shown consistent benefit in treating patients with delayed radiation injury. It has also had success in preventing radiation injury in some instances. Additional study in identifying patients at risk for injury and delivering hyperbaric oxygen with prophylactic intent to prevent these injuries appears to be promising. Additional approaches to applying hyperbaric oxygen as ...

In the last three decades, gemcitabine has progressed from the status of a laboratory cytotoxic drug to a standard clinical chemotherapeutic agent and a potent radiation sensitizer. In an effort to improve the efficacy of gemcitabine, additional chemotherapeutic agents have been combined with gemcitabine (both with and without radiation) but with toxicity proving to be a major limitation. There...

Dose-escalated radiation therapy for localized prostate cancer (PCa) has a clear therapeutic benefit; however, escalated doses may also increase injury to noncancerous tissues. Radiosensitizing agents can improve ionizing radiation (IR) potency, but without targeted delivery, these agents will also sensitize surrounding normal tissues. Here we describe the development of prostate-targeted RNAi ...

introduction h istone deacetylase inhibitors (hdis), as  radiation sensitizing agents, are considered as a novel class of anti-cancer factors, which are studied in various tumor cell-lines. valproic acid (vpa) is an hdi, which is effectively used in the treatment of epilepsy, migraines, and some particular types of depression. in this study, we evaluated the effects of vpa and ionizing radiatio...