1/3. Animal type melanoma: a report of a case with balloon-cell change and sentinel lymph node metastasis.Animal type melanoma is a rare histopathologic variant of melanoma characterized by sheets and nodules of heavily pigmented epithelioid melanocytes that involve the entire thickness of the dermis. This human neoplasm mimics melanocytic neoplasms seen in gray horses and laboratory animals; thus, is termed animal type melanoma. It is quite rare and, with only a few reported cases, its biological behavior is not well understood. We report an example of animal type melanoma on the back of a 27-year-old man. The lesion showed areas of melanoma in situ, which ruled out the possibility of metastatic melanoma. Features of regression were also seen at dermo-epidermal junction and papillary dermis. In some areas, neoplastic melanocytes exhibited a balloon-cell appearance; in others the neoplasm was composed of sheets and fascicles of heavily pigmented epithelioid melanocytes that permeated the entire dermis and extended into the dermal-subcutaneous interface, mimicking a cellular blue nevus. Epithelioid melanocytes in deeper areas showed abundant, heavily pigmented cytoplasm and pleomorphic nuclei with prominent eosinophilic nucleoli and some mitotic figures. The neoplastic cells did not show evidence of maturation in deeper areas of the lesion. In some sections, a nodule of heavily pigmented epithelioid melanocytes was seen far from the main bulk of the lesion, at the dermal-subcutaneous interface, raising the possibility of a satellite lesion. A lymphoscintigraphy showed a sentinel lymph node in the right axilla and a subsequent axillary lymphadenectomy demonstrated that the architecture of the sentinel lymph node was effaced by metastatic melanoma. The patient received adjuvant chemotherapy with inteferon alfa-2b and four months after this treatment the patient is alive and well, without evidence of recurrences or additional metastases.- - - - - - - - - - ranking = 1keywords = animal (Clic here for more details about this article) |
2/3. Combination chemotherapy with 254-S, ifosfamide, and peplomycin for advanced or recurrent cervical cancer.BACKGROUND. Based on the fact that combination chemotherapy with cisplatin, ifosfamide, and bleomycin generated a 69% response rate in patients with recurrent cervical cancer; that 254-S (a cisplatin analogue) monotherapy generated a 46.3% response rate for cervical cancer, which was higher than those generated by cisplatin and carboplatin in historic comparison; and that peplomycin is a bleomycin analogue with improved pulmonary toxic effects, a combination regimen with 254-S, ifosfamide, and peplomycin was evaluated in an animal experiment and a clinical study in patients with advanced or recurrent cervical cancer with an expectation that the regimen might show a higher efficacy than 254-S monotherapy and the combination regimen including cisplatin. methods. In the clinical testing, 254-S was administered intravenously (IV) at 80-100 mg/m2, ifosfamide was administered IV at 1500 mg/patient for 5 days, and peplomycin was administered intramuscularly at 5 mg/patient for 6 days. This treatment was repeated every 4 weeks. RESULTS. As a result, this regimen showed additive or synergistic antitumor effects in mice receiving B16 melanoma transplants. In the clinical study, 83.8% and 60.9% response rates were obtained in 37 previously untreated patients with Stage III or IV cervical cancer and 23 with recurrent cervical cancer, respectively. The dose-limiting factor was bone marrow toxic effects, which were tolerable. The other toxic effects were mild, and there were no deaths. CONCLUSIONS. From these results, this combination regimen was thought worthy of evaluation in a Phase III comparative study in patients with advanced or recurrent cervical cancer.- - - - - - - - - - ranking = 0.33333333333333keywords = animal (Clic here for more details about this article) |
3/3. pharmacokinetics of iodine-123-IMBA for melanoma imaging.The development of an effective radiopharmaceutical with affinity for malignant melanoma has been a research goal for some time. The early detection of melanoma metastases would greatly improve the therapy outcome for this disease. This article describes the synthesis of radioiodinated IMBA, N-(2-diethylaminoethyl)-3-[123I/131I]iodo-4-methoxybenzamide 8, its organ distribution, its comparison with BZA and other benzamides, and demonstrates the scintigraphic efficacy of the title compound with three melanoma patients. methods: The syntheses and radioiodination of eight benzamide derivatives are described. After intravenous injection into C57B16-mice subcutaneously transplanted with B16 melanoma, the organ distribution of the respective benzamides were investigated at 1 and 6 hr. n-octanol/phosphate buffer partition coefficients. The wholebody retention, erythrocyte and serum protein bound fractions of radioiodinated benzamides were measured. RESULTS: While structural changes in the amide substituents of N-(2-dialkylaminoalkyl)-4-iodobenzamides 2-7 resulted in no improvement in organ distribution compared with BZA, the 3-iodo-4-methoxyphenyl form of IMBA showed high melanoma uptake with significantly higher melanoma/nontarget tissue ratios. Compared with BZA the average ratio improved after 1 hr by a factor of eight and was still four times better after 6 hr. BZA and IMBA exhibit almost identical n-octanol/ phosphate buffer partition coefficients, however, IMBA has a faster urinary excretion facilitated by a lower affinity to erythrocytes and serum proteins; this could explain the improved tissue partinioning observed. Scintigraphy of patients with melanoma metastases confirmed the promising characteristics derived from the animal studies. CONCLUSION: Due to rapid background clearance and high melanoma affinity, IMBA showed high tumor contrast already at 4 hr after injection which makes it a promising new radiopharmaceutical for the scintigraphic detection of melanoma metastases.- - - - - - - - - - ranking = 0.33333333333333keywords = animal (Clic here for more details about this article) |