November 15 Clinical Cancer Research Highlights

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Selected Articles from the November 15, 2007 Issue

The articles referenced in this Highlights section will be available online in HTML and PDF formats to all interested users at no charge until the next issue of Clinical Cancer Research is published. Click on the article title to view the complete article.

View the Table of Contents for the November 15 issue of Clinical Cancer Research.

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Circumferential Margin is the Most Important Parameter after RCT

Gosens et al.

Page 6617

Histological determinants for prognostification after preoperative (radio) chemotherapy (RCT) have changed. Gosens and colleagues evaluated patients with locally advanced rectal cancer presenting with an involved or at least threatened circumferential margin (CRM) on preoperative imaging to investigate which factors, including assessment of tumor regression, are the best indicators for local recurrence and survival after preoperative RCT. Their results indicated that the assessment of CRM involvement is the most important pathologic parameter after RCT. Although tumor regression increases the chance on a free CRM, patients’ prognoses after a positive CRM are poor, regardless of the degree of therapy-induced regression.

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Radiopeptides Promising for Medullary Thyroid Cancer

Iten et al.

Page 6696

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Celastrol Inhibits Growth of Melanoma

Abbas et al.

Page 6769

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Gene Expression Analysis Proposes Alternative COX-2 Pathways

Sagiv et al.

Page 6807

Celecoxib, a COX-2 inhibitor, was recently confirmed to be a highly efficient preventive agent against colorectal polyp formation. Sagiv and colleagues searched for genes and pathways that mediate the cancer preventive function of celecoxib other than the prostaglandin synthesis, by using a gene expression array analysis of transformed vs. non-transformed cells following short and long incubation time with the physiological concentrations of the drug. Pathways such as those of Ras and related kinases, metabolism of glycohydrates and nucleic acids and others are suggested to be affected by celecoxib. It was also shown that cyclin-D1 gene plays an important role in cell transformation and that celecoxib down-regulated cyclin-D1 expression. 

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