Biomedical subjects

Basil F El-Rayes

Publications and source records attributed to Basil F El-Rayes.

21 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

PubMed2002

Breast cancer in women with human immunodeficiency virus infection: implications for diagnosis and therapy.

The rising incidence of the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection in women and the prolonged survival increases the risk of development of breast cancer in this population. Through December 2001, 38 cases of breast cancer, two occurring in men, have been reported in persons infected with HIV. Between 1995 and 2001, five HIV infected premenopausal women presented with breast cancer to the Karmanos Cancer Institute. Three patients presented 3-5 years after the diagnosis of HIV infection. One patient presented with stage IV breast cancer, three with stage III, and one with stage II disease. Chemotherapy-induced myelosuppression was pronounced in all patients. Two patients had progression of HIV on treatment manifested by a rise in HIV-1 RNA or development of opportunistic infections. In general, the outcome of breast cancer in our small series of patients was worse than in a non-HIV population. HIV infection may influence the natural history and treatment of breast cancer.

Adult↗

PubMed2002

Systemic therapy for advanced pancreatic cancer.

Death from pancreatic cancer remains high with few long-term survivors. Systemic chemotherapy with 5-fluorouracil-based combinations had minimal impact on natural history of this disease. Several new agents with activity against pancreatic cancer have been identified over the past decade. Gemcitabine has modest activity in this disease. Combination chemotherapy trials incorporating gemcitabine, cisplatin, 5-fluorouracil, oxaliplatin, docetaxel or irinotecan show improved outcomes in objective response rates and survival that need to be confirmed in prospectively randomized studies. Advancement in the understanding of the biology of pancreatic cancer has helped identify several molecular targets for the development of novel therapies. Ongoing and future treatment regimens for pancreatic cancer will incorporate traditional cytotoxic drugs and novel targeted therapies.

Angiogenesis Inhibitors↗

PubMed2002

Ciprofloxacin inhibits cell growth and synergises the effect of etoposide in hormone resistant prostate cancer cells.

Prostate cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer and the second leading cause of cancer related deaths in men in the United States. Ciprofloxacin is a relatively non-toxic antibiotic that can be easily administered orally with large volume of distribution and good tissue penetration. Studies from others and our laboratory have recently reported its anti-tumor activity in a variety of human tumor cells. In our current experiment, we studied the effect of ciprofloxacin on a hormone resistant prostate cancer (HRPC) cell line, PC-3. Our study shows significant in vitro cell growth inhibition of PC-3 cell line (p=0.0001) and also shows that there is a synergistic increase in the antiproliferative effect of etoposide when these cells are pretreated with ciprofloxacin for 24 h, prior to etoposide exposure (p=0.0001). Western blot analysis of the protein extracts from these cells showed down-regulation of Bcl-2, altering the ratio of Bax:Bcl-2 favoring apoptosis. In our study no significant effect was seen on p21WAF1 expression by the combination of ciprofloxacin and etoposide but there was down-regulation of p21WAF1 gene by ciprofloxacin alone. Ciprofloxacin also inhibited NF-kappaB binding to DNA. Further studies in this area are warranted as the roles of p21WAF1, Bax/Bcl-2 and NF-kappaB may be important molecular events in mediating the antiproliferative and apoptosis inducing effect of etoposide in combination with ciprofloxacin in HRPC cells.

Anti-Infective Agents↗