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The kinetics of 5-fluoruracil concentration in blood and urine in 18 patients with cancer of the pancreas was determined in a regional and systemic method of its administration. The concentration of 5-fluoruracil in blood was found to be, as a rule, lower and the time of detection shorted after i/a (regional) administration as compared with i/i (systemic) one. Accordingly, less amount of the substance involved is excreted with the urine in regional chemotherapy. This allows an application of large single and sessional doses in insignificant general toxic effects and also gaining much better therapeutic effect.

Analytical methods have been worked out for the study of the human metabolism of nalidixic acid. Under pathological conditions the excretion of its metabolites differed from that observed in healthy volunteers. The cause of these variations was studied on the basis of individual excretion curves. The results showed that human and microbial biotransformations were identical. The possibilites offered by the new methods in drug research are discussed.

Proinsulin-like components (PLC) and insulin have been measured in 24 hr urine samples from 8 healthy subjects. The mean excretion of PLC was 45.8 ng and that of insulin 314 ng; the PLC: insulin ratio was 0.14. Urinary PLC was increased 3.5 fold in a patient with a pancreatic islet cell tumor and the PLC: insulin ratio was 0.35. The urinary PLC: insulin ratio is lower than that of serum, presumably because of the relatively lower urinary clearance of the larger molecular weight PLC.