A 16-year-old girl was referred for the evaluation of headache exacerbation and progressive loss of visual field from one month ago. She also suffered from intermittent diarrhea since 12 months ago and secondary amenorrhea, headache, weight loss (4 - 5 kg) and weakness from six months ago. She had a history of transient polydipsia and excessive urine output during this period. Brain Magnetic Re...

Accidental overdose of chemotherapy drugs including vinblastin (VBL) have been reported in the literature. As VBL overdose is potentially fatal, we decided to introduce a 2-year-old girl affected by langerhans’ cell histiocytosis who was accidentally injected 10-times the prescribed dose of VBL (16 mg), and was saved with whole blood double exchange transfusion at 8 and 20 hrs after the acciden...

Recently we identified TPPP/p25 (tubulin polymerization promoting protein/p25) as a brain-specific unstructured protein that induced aberrant microtubule assemblies and ultrastructure in vitro and as a new marker for Parkinson's disease and other synucleopathies. In this paper the structural and functional consequences of TPPP/p25 are characterized to elucidate the relationship between the in v...

A population of NG108-15 neuroblastoma cells resistant to doxorubicin (NG/DOXR) was established. The cells exhibited a multidrug resistance phenotype with cross-resistance to vinblastin and colchicine, overexpression of a 170 kDa membrane protein identified as P-glycoprotein and reversal of resistance by verapamil and quinine. Compared with NG108-15 cells, NG/DOXR cells showed an increase in Na...

In order to analyze the clinical relevance of the pharmacokinetic interactions between vinblastine and antiretrovirals described in literature, we evaluated all HIV-infected patients with Hodgkin's lymphoma treated with vinblastine-containing regimens and combination antiretroviral therapy, in a single clinical center. The use of protease inhibitors was independently associated with WHO grade I...

introduction: desmoid tumors are very rare, benign fibrous neoplasms arise from the musculoaponeurotic structures throughout the body.   case report: the patient was a   seven-year old boy with a large mandibular mass growing over a period of six months. his ct-scan showed a large mass, 13 cm in diameter in the cheek area extending to the neck and trachea. biopsy was compatible with desmoid fib...

Overexpression of glucosylceramide synthase (GCS), a pivotal enzyme in glycolipid biosynthesis, contributes to cancer cell resistance to chemotherapy. We previously showed that transfection of doxorubicin-resistant MCF-7-AdrR cells with GCS antisense restored cell sensitivity to doxorubicin and greatly enhanced sensitivity to vinblastine and paclitaxel. In that study, doxorubicin promoted gener...

INTRODUCTION Malignant peripheral nerve sheath tumors (MPNST) are highly aggressive soft tissue sarcomas in which complete surgical resection is the mainstay of therapy. CLINICAL PRESENTATION We report a case of MPNST, a 24 year old patient with right neck painful mass of 13 cm of greater dimension, skin spots, lentigos, cutaneous neurofibromas. The neck CT scan revealed a mass with liquid an...

Kaposi's sarcoma (KS) most often affect the skin but occasionally affect the mucosa of different anatomic sites. The management of mucosal KS is seldom described in the literature. Data from 15 eligible patients with mucosal KS treated between 1994 and 2008 in five institutions within three countries of the Rare Cancer Network group were collected. The inclusion criteria were as follows: age >1...

Obesity is now considered as a risk factor for breast cancer in postmenopausal women. Adipokine levels are modulated in obesity, and may play a role in carcinogenesis. Moreover, obesity increases risk of cancer mortality. Here, we hypothesized that this increase could be due to a modification in angiogenesis, capital event in the development of metastases, and/or in effectiveness of cancer trea...