Current Pharmaceutical Design - Volume 18, Issue 23, 2012

Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is a clinically heterogeneous disease characterized by the accumulation/expansion of a clonal population of small mature B lymphocytes in blood, bone marrow, and lymphoid organs. Although initial genetic events are considered primarily responsible for the first step(s) of neoplastic transformation, the development and progression of the CLL clone are thought to be affected by various m Read More

Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is the most frequent leukemia in adults in the Western world and is characterized by the accumulation of monoclonal CD5+ mature B cells in the blood. The disease has a highly variable clinical course. CLL is subdivided into two disease subtypes, whereby leukemias with hypermutated immunoglobulin heavy chain variable (IGHV) genes have a more favorable prognosis than those Read More

Chemoimmunotherapy is the new gold standard of therapy for patients with advanced chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL). However, in spite of the high complete response rate achieved with chemoimmunotherapy, all patients eventually relapse and CLL is still incurable. Newer and more rationally developed compounds are clearly needed for these patients, in particular those with refractory disease. Among these agents, Read More

B-cell chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), the most common leukemia, originates from an expansion of a rare population of CD5+CD19+ mature B-cells. CLL occurs in two forms, aggressive and indolent. For the most part aggressive CLL shows high ZAP-70 expression and unmutated IgH VH, while indolent CLL is characterized by low ZAP-70 expression and mutated IgH VH. Despite detailed studies of clinical features and chro Read More

Purine nucleoside analogues (PNA) are the cytotoxic agents highly active in the treatment of indolent lymphoid malignancies. These drugs have chemical structure similar to adenosine or deoxyadenosine. PNAs are characterized by a similar mechanism of cytotoxicity both in proliferating and quiescent cells, such as inhibition of DNA synthesis, inhibition of DNA repair and accumulation of DNA strand breaks. In addition, PNAs in Read More

A key feature of the clinical course of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is that it induces a state of immunosuppression, causing increased susceptibility to infections and failure of anti-tumor immune responses. Cytotoxic chemotherapy still forms the mainstay of most current treatment regimens, but is not curative, and its lack of specificity means that it also targets normal immune cells, exacerbating this immunosuppre Read More

Treatment of chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) has recently undergone revolutionary changes. Two large randomized trials demonstrated superiority of chemoimmunotherapy combining fludarabine and cyclophosphamide with monoclonal anti-CD20 antibody rituximab (FCR) over fludarabine and cyclophosphamide (FC) alone in first line and relapse; this lead to establishment of FCR regimen as new gold standard in Read More

Treatment of recurrent or unresectable cutaneous and subcutaneaous tumors continues to be a major therapeutic challenge. Electrochemotherapy (ECT) is a palliative treatment of cutaneous and subcutaneous tumor nodules for which standard treatments (e.g. radiotherapy, chemotherapy, and surgery) have failed or proved to be insufficient. ECT combines the electropulsation of tumor cells (by local application of electric pulses) Read More

Cancer remains one of the leading causes of death in the Western world. Despite bold advances in therapeutic oncology, new drug development is infamously ineffective due to the lack of predictive in vitro models. Most patients that suffer from cancer do not die from the primary tumor but due to the development of metastases. And yet current in vitro screening methods for new drugs in oncology still largely target cytotoxicity Read More

The estrogen-related receptors (ERRs), comprising ERRα, ERRβ and ERRγ, are the members of the nuclear receptor superfamily, which have been functionally implicated in estrogen signal pathway in various patterns. However, no natural ligand of ERRs has been identified to data, so identification of the synthetic modulators (inverse agonist and agonist) of ERRs would be highly effective in the treatment of estrogen-rel Read More

Polymersomes are self-assembled spherical vesicles based on amphiphilic block copolymers. This review presents a summary of the achievements in the field of polymersome researches to date. Polymersomes have been applied as versatile drug carriers. Some polymersomes, which have well-known stimuli-responsibility, can release drugs in a controlled manner at the target site when they are given a specific stimulation such Read More

Polymeric micelles (PMs) belong to supramolecular core-shell-type assemblies. PMs are from amphiphilic block copolymers with several tens of nanometers in diameter. An important criterion verifying the effectiveness of micellar drug carriers is the ability to control the location and time over which drug release occurs. The pH variations in the body are particularly important in the development of micellar carriers for trea Read More