Anti-Cancer Agents in Medicinal Chemistry (Formerly Current Medicinal Chemistry - Anti-Cancer Agents) - Volume 7, Issue 4, 2007

In this second part of the theme issue “Imaging and Treatment of Oncological Diseases” several image guided radionuclide based treatment approaches are discussed in depth: the renowned iodine-131 therapy for thyroid cancer is reviewed and also two novel treatment options for liver cancer patients. Furthermore, a review on bone seeking radiopharmaceuticals and one on liposomes for multimodal imaging are includ Read More

Many patients with cancer develop symptomatic skeletal metastases at an advanced stage of their disease. Skeletal metastases are often complicated by pain. They cause considerable morbidity and mortality. Besides analgesics, treatment options include external beam radiotherapy, bisphosphonates, chemotherapy, surgery and bone seeking radiopharmaceuticals. Pain palliation with bone seeking radiopharmaceutica Read More

In 1942, Dr. Seidlin of the Memorial Hospital in New York was faced with a 51-year- old patient who had undergone a thyroidectomy in 1923 [1]. At the time, the histologic diagnosis was a ‘malignant adenoma’ of the thyroid. In 1938 the patient returned with overt signs of thyroid hyperfunction (hyperthyroidism) and lower back pain. A metastasis was found in the lower spine, and surgically removed. Over the next years the pati Read More

Cancer often remains an incurable disease, despite significant progresses in diagnosis and treatment that have been made. Specifically, the use of nuclear medicine in oncology is greatly contributing to both imaging and therapy aspects. Targeted therapies are a major field of interest since it increases efficiency and reduces side effects. Brachytherapy is among the most valuable of recent developments for treating localized t Read More

Lipid-based nanocarriers have proven successful in the delivery of mainly chemotherapeutic agents, and currently they are being applied clinically in the treatment of various types of cancer. These drug delivery systems achieve increased therapeutic efficacy by altering the pharmacokinetics and biodistribution of encapsulated drugs, resulting in decreased drug toxicity and enhanced accumulation in tumor tissue. This increase Read More

Primary and secondary liver cancer have longtime been characterized by an overall poor prognosis since the majority of patients are not candidates for surgical resection with curative intent, systemic chemotherapy alone has rarely resulted in long-term survival, and the role of conventional external beam radiation therapy has traditionally been limited due to the relative sensitivity of the liver parenchyma to radi Read More

The respiratory epithelium expresses the cholinergic system including nicotinic receptors (nAChRs). It was reported that normal human bronchial epithelial cells (BEC), which are the precursor for squamous cell carcinomas, and small airway epithelial cells (SAEC), which are the precursor for adenocarcinomas, have slightly different repertoires of nAChRs. Studies shown that nAChRs expressed on lung carcinoma or mesothelio Read More

Apoptosis is a genetically programmed process of controlled and orderly cell suicide, which is critical for multicellular organisms during development and tissue homeostasis. In cancer, the ratio of apoptosis to cell division is altered, resulting in a net gain of malignant tissue. Tumor cells may acquire resistance to apoptosis by the expression of anti-apoptotic proteins, or by the down-regulation or mutation of pro-apo Read More

Telomerase is an attractive target for anti-cancer therapeutics due to its requirement for cellular immortalization and expression in greater than 85% of human neoplasms. Though initially promising, strategies that inhibit telomerase with either small molecules or antisense oligonucleotides have a major limitation, namely the lag time required for telomere shortening before cellular effects are attained. As alternative approa Read More