many anticancer drugs in clinical use interact with dna through intercalation, which is process that starts with the transfer of the intercalating molecule from an aqueous environment to the hydrophobic space between two adjacent dna base pairs. in general, intercalatig agents are two types: monofunctional and bifunctional. monofunctional intercalators contain one intercalating unit and bifunct...

D.M. Grekas, Ass. Prof. in Nephrology, University Hospital AHEPA, Thessaloniki 546 37 (Greece) Dear Sir, The efficacy of steroids and immunosuppressive agents in the treatment of idiopathic or systemic glomeru-lar disease remains controversial. The use of corticoste-roids in the treatment of lupus nephritis is now standard, even though there is no controlled evidence that survival or morbidity ...

Cyclophosphamide was administered to adult male rats (130 mg/kg, single i.p. injection) and its effects on the P-450 enzymes that contribute to the activation of this drug in rat liver were then assessed. P-450-mediated cyclophosphamide 4-hydroxylase activity in isolated rat liver microsomes decreased by approximately 70% over a 9-day period following drug treatment. This decrease was due to th...

This work presents a study about the elimination of anticancer drugs, a group of pollutants considered recalcitrant during conventional activated sludge wastewater treatment, using a biological treatment based on the fungus Trametes versicolor. A 10-L fluidized bed bioreactor inoculated with this fungus was set up in order to evaluate the removal of 10 selected anticancer drugs in real hospital...

The effectiveness of many clinically useful anticancer drugs can be severely limited by drug resistance, which appears to be intrinsic to some tumors but can also arise during multiple courses of chemotherapy in the case of many others. Studies carried out using cultured tumor cell models and other systems have established that a variety of mechanisms can contribute to drug resistance (1-3). Th...

Amifostine is one of the cytoprotective drugs used during anticancer therapy. Amifostine as a thiol compound possesses antioxidant properties and protects only healthy cells against damage, mainly by scavenging reactivity oxygen species, competing with oxygen to prevent oxygen radical interactions with DNA, and promoting cell repair through hydrogen donation to reactive oxygen species. The aim ...

Background: Cyclophosphamide as an alkalizing and cytotoxic agent contributes in treatment of different kinds of cancer. It can pass the blood-brain barrier. Linking two strains of DNA in cell nucleus and breaking the inner and outer strain linkages and inhibiting RNA synthesis and as a consequence, inhibiting protein synthesis, cyclophosphamide demonstrates severe pharmacological side effects ...

Preconceptional paternal exposure to cyclophosphamide, a widely used anticancer agent, leads to increases in embryo loss, malformations, and behavioral deficits in offspring; these abnormalities are transmissible to subsequent generations [Auroux, M., Dulioust, E., Selva, J. & Rince, P. (1990) Mutat. Res. 229, 189-200]. Little information exists on the mechanisms underlying this male-mediated d...