Will Antiangiogenic Agents be a Future for Mesothelioma Therapy?

Background: Malignant mesothelioma (MM) is an aggressive disease that is diagnosed mostly in locally advanced or metastatic stage. In this condition chemotherapy with the combination cisplatin and pemetrexed or ralitrexed represents the standard treatment as supported by a phase III study. However, chemotherapy has very limited effect on the improvement of survival of patients and very few of the MM patients survive more than 2 years. A better understanding of molecular mechanisms and pathways involved in angiogenesis in MM is the basis for the development of new drugs targeted against these pathways responsible for the proliferation and survival of tumor cells.

Malignant pleural mesothelioma: current treatments and emerging drugs

Background: Malignant pleural mesothelioma (MPM) is an uncommon disease whose incidence is increasing worldwide over the past 30 years. Surgical resection and radiotherapy represent the standard treatment in patient with resectable MPM. Chemotherapy is also necessary to reduce incidence of distant metastases, but the optimal setting of treatment (neoadjuvant, adjuvant and intrapleural) is not clarified. For the patients with unresectable MPM, the combination cisplatin and pemetrexed or ralitrexed is the standard treatment as supported by a Phase III study. Better understanding of molecular pathways involved in MPM has enabled inclusion of new drugs targeted against pathways responsible for proliferation, cell survival and angiogenesis. Objective: This review discusses the current treatment option, the specific signal pathways activated in MPM and the novel agents under evaluation in clinical trials. Methods: We use for this article abstracts, papers, oral presentations from ASCO and the website http://www.clinical-trials.gov. Results/conclusion: This review summarizes the activity of chemotherapy and of new agents under evaluation in clinical trials. The better understanding of molecular pathways activated in MPM will hopefully provide new therapeutic options for these patients in the future.

A review of dsb induction data for varying quality radiations

Purpose: This short review summarizes the data obtained with various techniques for measuring the yields of double strand breaks (dsb) produced by particle radiations of differing linear energy transfer (LET) in order to obtain relative biological effectiveness (RBE) values.

Modelling local-scale determinants and the probability of microarthropod species occurrence in Antarctic soils

Soil fauna in the extreme conditions of Antarctica consists of a few microinvertebrate species patchily distributed at different spatial scales. Populations of the prostigmatic mite Stereotydeus belli and the collembolan Gressittacantha terranova from northern Victoria Land (Antarctica) were used as models to study the effect of soil properties on microarthropod distributions. In agreement with the general assumption that the development and distribution of life in these ecosystems is mainly controlled by abiotic factors, we found that the probability of occurrence of S. belli depends on soil moisture and texture and on the sampling period (which affects the general availability of water); surprisingly, none of the analysed variables were significantly related to the G. terranova distribution. Based on our results and literature data, we propose a theoretical model that introduces biotic interactions among the major factors driving the local distribution of collembolans in Antarctic terrestrial ecosystems. (c) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.