The unavailability of effective treatment of metastatic hormone refractory prostatic carcinoma warrants trials of new and promising treatments. Coumarin is an investigational new drug that has produced objective tumor regression in some patients with metastatic renal cell carcinoma and malignant melanoma. Coumarin has shown activity against prostatic carcinoma in the Dunning R-3327 rat prostatic adenocarcinoma model. Forty-eight patients with metastatic hormone naive (5 stage D1 and 10 stage D2) or hormone refractory (33 stage D3) prostatic carcinoma of average age 67.6 years (range 46-86) and ECOG performance status of 2 or better were given 3 grams coumarin daily by mouth and evaluated monthly for toxicity and response by rigid criteria in a multicenter trial. Toxicity was limited to asymptomatic SGOT elevations in 3 patients and nausea and vomiting in 4 patients that required cessation of therapy in 2. Eligibility and protocol violations removed 6 additional patients from response evaluation. There were no complete responses. Partial responses (3 of 40 patients, 8%) occurred in 2 patients with bidimentionally measurable disease and 1 patient with disease evaluable by bone scan and elevated prostate specific antigen and prostatic acid phosphatase. The remaining patients progressed after 1 to 12 (average 4.4) months. Coumarin is a relatively nontoxic drug that may warrant further trials in a subset of patients with prostatic carcinoma.

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A new method is described for biotinylation of oligonucleotide probes for use in molecular hybridization reactions. Biotin-11-dUTP residues were added enzymatically, using terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase, to the 3' terminus of a synthetic oligonucleotide prepared from the known nucleotide sequence for adenosine deaminase. The biotinylated probe was hybridized to DNA and mRNA selectively immobilized on nitrocellulose and detected by sequential incubation of the nitrocellulose membrane with avidin and biotinylated polyalkaline phosphatase, followed by colorimetric development. The biotinylated oligonucleotide probe proved useful for the qualitative detection of complementary DNA and mRNA sequences but was unsatisfactory for quantitative determinations using reflective densitometry.

Sttnzmary.--Adult Ss were given either 3, 6, 9, 15, or 30 trials of relevant or irrelevant verbal pretraining prior to 21 trials on a common discriminative motor task. Relevant pretraining facilitated motor performance significantly over-all, and increaing amounts of relevant pretraining significantly increased the amount of specific proactive facilitation. Within relevanc pretraining conditions, significantly superior motor performance was related to the subsequent correct recall of verbal pretraining responses. Methodological problems and theoretical implications are discussed.

A black patient with severe aplastic anemia is described who underwent successful bone marrow transplantation from a sibling with chronic neutropenia. During an evaluation to identify a suitable donor, it was found that the majority of family members tested had neutropenia, with no familial history of significant infections or related hospitalizations. In vitro hemopoietic culture studies of marrow from the patient's HLA-MLC-matched siblings showed normal numbers of pluripotential and committed hemopoietic progenitors; in vitro hemopoietic colony formation from the patient was markedly subnormal, consistent with the clinical picture of severe aplastic anemia. Following appropriate conditioning therapy, marrow transplanted from one of these neutropenic sibs produced full hematopoietic reconstitution. Posttransplant marrow culture studies of the patient showed restoration of a normal pattern of in vitro hemopoiesis. The in vitro culture studies and clinical experience in this patient support the concept that chronic neutropenia of blacks is not primarily a marrow progenitor cell disorder but, more likely, a manifestation of a genetically determined alteration in granulocyte kinetics.