BACKGROUND Vinblastine is the standard treatment for children with Langerhans cell histiocytosis (LCH). Whether this treatment could be extended to adults with LCH is questionable. This retrospective multicenter study included 35 adult patients (median age 33 years; 23 men; 80% with multisystem LCH) who were treated with vinblastine + steroids as a first-line chemotherapy and followed for a med...

Assessment of specific apoptosis and survival pathways implicated in anticancer drug action is important for understanding drug mechanisms and modes of resistance in order to improve the benefits of chemotherapy. In order to better examine the role of mitogen-activated protein kinases, including JNK and ERK, as well as the tumor suppressor p53, in the response of tumor cells to chemotherapy, we...

The effects of vinblastine sulphate, alone and in combination with other antimitotic agents, were tested in vitro on testicular tissue from the anuran, Xenopus laevis. Treatment with vinblastine alone resulted in dissolution of spindle and intercellular bridge microtubules, but centrioles and sperm tail axonemes remained intact. In addition, no paracrystalloid inclusions typical of those report...

The antimicrotubular agents colchicine, vinblastine, and podophyllotoxin have been found to stimulate steroid production by Y-l adrenal tumor cells in culture. The amount of steroid secreted under the influence of these agents is comparable to the amount produced during maximal adrenocorticotropin (ACTH) stimulation. The steroid end products, ZOa-dihydroprogesterone and llfl-hydroxy-20a-dihydro...

Efflux of cytotoxic agents mediated by P-glycoprotein is believed to be an important mechanism of multidrug resistance, which remains a serious limitation to successful chemotherapy in cancers such as metastatic breast cancer. A series of 4-aryl-1,4-dihydropyridines and corresponding aromatized 4-arylpyridines have been synthesized based on structure modifications of niguldipine to enhance mult...

We have examined the accumulative transport properties of the Malpighian (excretory) tubules of the tobacco hornworm Manduca sexta to test the hypothesis that a P-glycoprotein-like multidrug transporter is active and is responsible for the excretion of dietary nicotine in this tissue. Isolated tubules were cannulated and exposed to radiolabelled forms of either nicotine (5 min exposure) or the ...

We showed previously that microtubule disassembly by vinblastine induces the proto-oncogene c-myc in epithelial mammary HBL100 cells. In this study, we demonstrate that vinblastine treatment in these cells, in contrast to what was observed with the colon adenocarcinoma cell line HT29-D4, activated the transcription factor NFkappaB, which has been involved in c-myc regulation. The microtubule di...

The manuscript published by Microb Biotechnol, volume 10, highlights the relevance of the fungus Nigrospora sphaerica, an endophyte isolated from Catharanthus roseus, as an alternative source to obtain vinblastine, a compound used in chemotherapy schemes to treat several types of cancer. Authors showed that purification of vinblastine from extracts of the fungus has higher activity and yield in...

Vinca alkaloids, vinblastine and vincristine sulfate, have a variety of effects on cells in vivo and in vitro (1-10) . In low sublethal doses, vinblastine and vincristine arrest cells in mitosis (1-3) and prevent the formation and organization of the spindle microtubules (2, 3) . Accumulation of large proteinaceous crystals in platelets (7), in tissue culture cells (8, 10), and in cells of the ...