Between October 1985 and October 1989, 75 previously untreated patients with stage III and IV non Hodgkin's lymphoma, large cell type, were treated with an alternating weekly chemotherapy regimen including the following drugs: week 1: Doxorubicin, vincristine, cyclophosphamide, bleomycin, and intrathecal (i.th.) methotrexate and cytarabine; week 2: Methotrexate with leucovorin rescue; week 3: Doxorubicin, ifosfamide with mesna, etoposide, and i.th. methotrexate and cytarabine; week 4: Methotrexate with leucovorin rescue. Complete responders after three cycles according to this schedule (12 weeks) were given 18 gys cranial irradiation and randomized between one additional cycle or three monthly CHOP (consolidation treatment). Among 66 evaluable patients, 53 achieved a complete remission (CR 80 per cent) and seven a partial remission (11 per cent). There were six failures, and nine early deaths during the initial phase, mostly due to septic problems. Forty-one of the 53 CR patients (77.3 per cent) have remained free of disease with a median follow-up of 15 months (1-49). Eight of the 12 relapses occurred during the first year, the four others at 13, 14, 16 and 38 months respectively. The 2-year survival was 63 per cent for the whole group, and 77 per cent for the CR group. No difference has been observed up until now between the two groups with different consolidation treatment. Therefore, this protocol seems to be able to produce a high rate of complete and durable remission. The analysis of prognostic factors suggests that some high-risk patients should be considered for intensification therapy with the support of autologous bone marrow transplantation.

Adolescent↗

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Patient accrual and interim statistical analysis in long-term randomized clinical trials: the French chronic lymphocytic leukemia CLL 80 protocol as a case study.

The CLL 80 clinical trial of treatment for chronic lymphocytic leukemia was designed using a three-stage prognostic classification. Within each stage patients received one of two treatments allocated by randomization, two adjacent stages having a common treatment. The fixed-sample design required 850 patients entered over a period of 8.5 years. Active patient recruitment led to 741 patients being randomized in four years. The first interim analysis, carried out at this point, showed a treatment difference in one stage which was statistically significant (p = 0.001) and justified an early termination of the protocol. This paper discusses practical aspects of patient accrual and interim analysis in this study.

Antineoplastic Combined Chemotherapy Protocols↗

PubMedDate not supplied

5th International Workshop on Chronic Lymphocytic Leukemia.

In the past few years important advances have been made in our understanding of the biology and natural history of CLL; also, new strategies and agents offer promise in the treatment of this form of leukemia. Now, patients can be treated on a more rationale basis and with real prospects for a sustained control of their disease, and improved quality of life. Hopefully, progresses in CLL will continue to accumulate in the coming years.

Animals↗

PubMedDate not supplied

Chromosomal DNA and p53 stability, ubiquitin system and apoptosis in B-CLL lymphocytes.

The ubiquitin system regulates diverse biological processes such as DNA replication and repair, biogenesis of ribosome, peroxisome and nucleosome, cell cycle, stress response and signal transduction pathways. Thus, the reported role of the ubiquitin system in apoptotic death control as well the alteration of its control in carcinogenesis should come as no surprise. Indeed, we and other groups have reported that the ubiquitin system is involved in apoptotic cell death of normal human lymphocytes and that this control is altered in B lymphocytes derived from chronic lymphocytic leukemia patients (B-CLL), rendering these malignant cells hypersensitive to specific inhibition of protein degradation/processing through proteasomal function. This approach recently allowed us to demonstrate that the stability of the tumor suppressor and pro-apoptotic protein p53 is differentially regulated in B-CLL versus normal lymphocytes and that this difference might at least partly explain the impaired response of B-CLL lymphocytes to apoptotic death activation. These results strongly suggest an imbalance in p53 regulation in B-CLL cells that leads to a variable response to DNA damage and constitutively expressed chromosomal instability. The question we and others would like to address is whether this alteration, or more likely a subset of alterations of the ubiquitin-proteasome pathway, is specific to B-CLL malignancy or if it is a hallmark of cancer cells in general. In either case, a better understanding of the ubiquitin-dependent control of apoptosis should pave the way towards a methodological approach for in vitro development of discriminating treatments which may be of potential usefulness in clinical trials of B-CLL.

Apoptosis↗