Gemcitabine combined with capecitabine in the treatment for 41 patients with relapsed or metastatic biliary tract carcinoma / 中华肿瘤杂志

<p><b>OBJECTIVE</b>To investigate the efficacy of the combination of gemcitabine with capecitabine in the chemotherapy for patients with relapsed or metastatic biliary tract carcinoma.</p><p><b>METHODS</b>Forty-one patients with unresectable relapsed or metastatic carcinoma of the biliary tract were treated from March 2000 to December 2004. The regimen consisted of intravenous administration of gemcitabine plus oral intake of capecitabine every 3 weeks for more than 2 cycles. The parameters including tumor response, clinical benefit rate,survival and safety were observed.</p><p><b>RESULTS</b>Thirty-six patients were valuable and 5 patients were excluded from this series due to various reasons. Eleven patients (30.1%) had a partial response and another 11 patients (30.1%) experieced stable disease with a clinical benefit rates of 61.1%. The median overall survival time and time to progression were 10 months and 6 months, respectively. The one-year survival rate was 40.0%. The adverse events including nausea, diarrhea and hand-foot syndrome, fatigue, neutropenia, thrombocytopenia were frequently observed, which were usually in grade I or II, rarely in grade III and none in grade IV (NCI-CTC).</p><p><b>CONCLUSION</b>Our results show that the regimen of gemcitabine combined with capecitabine is effective and well tolerated in patients with unresectable relapsed or metastatic carcinoma of the biliary tract.</p>

Relapse or disease-free survival rate prediction value of TIP30 protein expression in NSCLC / 中国癌症杂志

Background and Purpose:TIP30 is a newly found tumor suppressing protein that has low level expression in many kinds of tumor cell lines,and it inhibits the growth of tumor cells of different origin.In this article,we want to probe into the value of a newly found tumor suppressor gene TIP30 as a molecular marker for the prediction of relapse or metastasis of lung cancer patients.Methods:In our present study,immunohistochemical analyses of a retrospective database of pathologic specimens were used to demonstrate the expression of TIP30 protein in NSCLC.Results:The low expression of TIP30 protein in NSCLC tumor tissue was statistically significant in the clinical stage,relapse or metastasis or 5 year disease-free survival rate,whereas low levels of TIP30 expression did not relate to histologic type and histologic differentiation.Conclusions:TIP30 protein may be used as a molecular marker to identify and predict the relapse or metastasis of NSCLC,and may provide a new clue for the clinical doctor to evaluate the prognosis of patients with NSCLC.