Biomedical subjects

D Faraggi

Publications and source records attributed to D Faraggi.

41 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

PubMed1989

Phase II trial of continuous drug infusions in advanced ovarian carcinoma: acivicin versus vinblastine.

Sixty-six women with advanced ovarian carcinoma of coelomic epithelial origin were randomly assigned to one of two intravenous single-agent infusion treatment regimens, either acivicin (60 mg/m2/course, administered as a 72-hr infusion) or vinblastine (7.5 mg/m2/course, administered as a 120-hr infusion) every three weeks. All had progressive disease after one to three prior chemotherapeutic regimens. Of 62 patients who were evaluable for response, survival and toxicity, there was one partial response (2%) produced by vinblastine. Median survival was 13 weeks on either treatment arm. Three patients (10%) on the acivicin arm experienced life-threatening myelosuppression. Severe toxicities resulting from this treatment included myelosuppression (26%), neurotoxicity (16%), mucositis (3%) and vomiting (6%). Vinblastine was associated with one lethal pneumonia and five cases of life-threatening myelosuppression (16%); severe toxicities included myelosuppression (58%), genitourinary toxicity (6%), infection (3%), and edema (3%). Neither regimen produces useful clinical results in patients who have relapsed after prior chemotherapy for ovarian carcinoma.

Adenocarcinoma↗

PubMed1987

A program which determines mutagenic concentrations of chemical carcinogens via a diffusion bioassay.

A computer program implementing a mathematical model for determining mutagenic concentrations of chemical carcinogens was developed. The mathematical model describes the experiment in which a droplet of a suspected carcinogen is put at the center of a petri dish containing a bacterial lawn in an agar gel. After a period of incubation during which the chemical diffuses outward, one observes a concentric ring of mutants around the center. The largest radius at which mutation occurs, r mut, corresponds to the lowest (threshold) concentration of the chemical sufficient to produce bacterial mutation. Given a series of initial concentrations of a chemical and the resulting r mut's, the program computes and reports the threshold concentration and the decay time of the chemical. The program is also used as a method to determine the lowest mutagenic concentration for a particular time of exposure.

Diffusion↗

PubMed1986

Strain and site dependence of polyploidization of cultured rat smooth muscle.

Smooth muscle cell (SMC) growth may play an important role in the pathogenesis of vascular diseases such as atherosclerosis and hypertension. Recent studies have demonstrated that, under different growth stimuli in vivo, SMC may respond by proliferation of diploid cells, polyploidization to the tetraploid (or even octaploid) state, or both. In this study, we used flow cytometry to evaluate the intrinsic tendencies of aortic SMC and nonarterial cells from rats of different strains, ages, and blood pressures to polyploidize in response to in vitro growth stimulation. Significant strain-related differences in polyploidization of aortic SMC were found (P less than 0.001): highest in WKY (normotensive inbred rat related to SHR), intermediate in SHR (genetically hypertensive rat), and lowest in Sprague-Dawley and Fischer (normotensive outbred and inbred rats). Animal age had less or no effect on the degree of polyploidization. Nonarterial cells (venous SMC and lung cells) from WKY and SHR remained essentially diploid, suggesting tissue specificity of in vitro polyploidization. Studies of the growth kinetics of uncloned and clonal populations of aortic SMC revealed decreased proliferation as the ploidy increased in WKY, SHR, and Sprague-Dawley. These findings suggest that genetic strain factors as well as cell type/site of origin significantly influence in vitro polyploidization, whereas animal age and blood pressure do not. The findings also emphasize the need to consider ploidy changes when evaluating in vitro SMC growth kinetics. Further studies will improve understanding of SMC growth regulation and the functional significance of vascular polyploidy.

Aging↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Discrimination techniques applied to the NCI in vitro anti-tumour drug screen: predicting biochemical mechanism of action.

The National Cancer Institute currently tests approximately 400 compounds per week against a panel of human tumour cell lines in order to identify potential anti-cancer drugs. We describe several approaches, based on these in vitro data, to the problem of identifying the primary biochemical mechanism of action of a compound. Using linear and non-parametric discriminant procedures and cross-validation, we find that accurate identification of the mechanism of action is achieved for approximately 90 per cent of a diverse collection of 141 known compounds, representing six different mechanistic categories. We demonstrate that two-dimensional graphical displays of the compounds in terms of the initial three principal components (of the original data) result in suggestive visual clustering according to mechanism of action. Finally, we compare the classification accuracy of the statistical discrimination procedures with the accuracy obtained from a neural network approach and, for our example, we find that the results obtained from the various approaches are similar.

Antineoplastic Agents↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Comparison between self-hypnosis, masking and attentiveness for alleviation of chronic tinnitus.

The efficacy of self-hypnosis (SH), masking (MA) and attentiveness to the patient's complaints (AT) in the alleviation of tinnitus was evaluated. Forty-five male patients close in age with chronic tinnitus related to acoustic trauma were assigned to three matched subgroups: SH, AT or MA. The therapeutic stimuli in the SH and MA sessions, recorded on audio cassettes, were given to the patients for use when needed. SH significantly reduced the tinnitus severity; AT partially relieved the tinnitus; MA did not have any significant effect.

Adult↗