Search

With a development of radiotherapeutic techniques, availability of radiotherapy data on cardiotoxicity, and slowly improving esophageal cancer outcomes, an increasing emphasis is placed on the heart protection in radiation treated esophageal cancer patients. Radiation induced heart complications encompass mainly pericardial disease, cardiomyopathy, coronary artery atherosclerosis, valvular heart disease, and arrhythmias. The most frequent toxicity is pericardial effusion which is usually asymptomatic in the majority of patients. The use of modern radiotherapy techniques is expected to reduce the risk of cardiotoxicity, although this expectation has to be confirmed by clinical data., (© 2020 Greater Poland Cancer Centre. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Cervical cancer affects women worldwide, especially in developing countries. Approximately 500,000 cases of this disease are diagnosed per year. The method of choice in the treatment of advanced cervical cancers (in accordance with the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics staging system (FIGO) starting from stage IIB) is combined radiotherapy with concomitant chemotherapy. This treatment provides good tumour control, but it carries a risk of late complications in the irradiated area in 10-15 % of cases. Methylation is one of the methods of epigenetic control, which has an important role in gene expression. Aberrant methylation of normal CpG islands in promoters of tumour suppressor genes such as RB, p53 or DNA reparation genes ATM, BRCA1,2, and RAD51 gene family causes silencing of their function and cell cycle deregulation, which is one of the efficient ways of neoplastic transformation. The significantly decreased expression of molecules involved in DNA response may cause facilitated radiosensitivity in predisposed individuals. We looked for the relationship between hypermethylation of 18 DNA reparation genes and late toxicity occurrence in cervical cancer patients treated by chemoradiotherapy using methylation-specific multiplex ligation-dependent probe amplification (MS-MLPA). The cut-off value for the hypermethylation was set at 10 %. We confirmed significant association between promoter hypermethylation in the XRCC2 gene and occurrence of late grade III-IV toxicity in cervical cancer patients (P = 0.0357). This finding could be useful in the late toxicity prediction in radiotherapy-treated patients.

Aim: Brachytherapy is an alternative to surgery in the treatment of the early stages of oral tongue cancer. The aim of this retrospective study was to analyze the clinical risk factors and possible candidate biomarkers of local and regional tumor control., Patients & Methods: Twenty-four patients were treated between the years 2001 and 2010. Median follow-up was 37.4 months. Correlation between disease-free survival and clinical stage, tumor grade, resection margin, depth of invasion, and p16, EGF receptor, NF-κB, HIF-1α, HER2, Ku-80, COX-2 and VEGF expression was evaluated., Results: The estimated 5-year local control was 81% and locoregional control was 62%. Depth of tumor invasion (p = 0.018) and higher VEGF expression (p = 0.016) were significantly predictive for worse disease-free survival in Cox multivariate analysis., Conclusion: Intensity of VEGF expression and depth of tumor invasion may be significantly negative predictors of disease-free survival in tongue cancer patients treated by brachytherapy alone. Predictive value of VEGF deserves evaluation in larger studies.

Unlabelled: Clinical oncologists have been focusing their efforts on attempting to define risk groups of patients with unusual biological reactions to the recommended therapy regimens using molecular biology techniques., The Aims of Our Study Were: (i) to find a design and validate a method for fast and reliable analysis of the D1853N (5557G>A) genetic polymorphism in the ATM (ataxia-telangiectasia mutated) gene; (ii) to use side-directed mutagenesis to generate ATM 5557A-positive DNA (reference ATM5557A DNA); and (iii) to analyze a group of patients suffering from cervical carcinoma with adverse responses to radiotherapy. The 5557A variant was found in three of twenty women (15%). Our data show that the prevalence of the 5557A allelic variant in cervical cancer subjects with adverse responses after irradiation probably does not differ from the prevalence common in Caucasians. A larger population study should confirm these preliminary results.