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Bladder cancers frequently exhibit an increased number of epidermal growth factor receptors (EGFR) in comparison to normal urothelium. The EGFR could potentially be a target for toxic conjugates. The aim of our study was to compare the expression of EGFR in metastases with concurrent or primary tumour in the urinary bladder using immunohistochemical techniques and a monoclonal antibody. Tumour material from 20 patients was investigated. The majority (13/20) of the metastases were homogeneously stained and showed a moderate to strong membranous staining for EGFR. The expression of EGFR in primary bladder tumours and metastases was similar. There was no indication that tumour tissue exposed to chemotherapy or radiation had a decreased number of EGFR. Targeting of the EGFR thus seems potentially applicable to metastatic disease. Int. J. Cancer 76:189–193, 1998.© 1998 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.

Initial treatment of nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) generally involves radiotherapy because of the difficulty in performing radical surgery in this area of the head/neck, and because of the good local control achieved with radiotherapy alone (Perez & Brady, 1987;Fee, 1990).Despite the high cure rate for patients with stage I and II NPC, the prognosis of patients with stage III and IV is still disappointing being the 5-year survival rate in the range of 10-45% and 0-30% for stage III and stage IV respectively (Ho, 1978;Huang, 1980;Huang & Chu, 1981).The most frequent cause of death in advanced NPC is represented by loco-regional recurrence, but also distant metastatic spread contributes to further worsen patients' prognosis (Merino et al., 1977;Bedwinek et al., 1980;Vikram et al., 1985). In fact, among carcinomas developing in the head/ neck area, cancers arising in the nasopharynx are those that, by far, most frequently spread to distant organs with an incidence of distant metastases ranging from 20% to 40% (Bedwinek et al., 1980;Vikram et al., 1986).To date there is little information on the role of systemic chemotherapy in the management of patients with recurrent and/or metastatic NPC . Small groups of patients with advanced NPC have been generally enrolled in larger studies including patients with HNC originating from sites other than nasopharynx (Amrein & Weiztman, 1985;Merlano et al., 1987;Choksi et al., 1988;Palmeri et al., 1989;. Thus it is very difficult, if not impossible, to draw any conclusions on the role of chemotherapy in advanced NPC from such studies. Moreover, the clinical characteristics of these patients significantly differ from those of patients affected by other HNC (Fedder, 1985;Perez & Brady, 1987 al., 1980; Vickram et al., 1986;Perez & Brady, 1987).In the present paper we report a review of the outcome of 40 cases of recurrent and/or metastatic NPC treated with cisplatin-containing polychemotherapeutic regimens at our Institution. This retrospective analysis was carried out in view of the current scarcity of medical literature concerning the chemotherapeutic management of metastatic and/or recurrent NPC.Patients and methods All patients included in this review were required to have: histologically confirmed NPC reviewed by a pathologist; recurrent NPC after loco-regional therapy or metastatic disease; bidimensionally measurable disease which included loco-regional recurrencies or distant metastases evaluated by CT scan and/or other diagnostic tools, such as chest X-ray and bone X-ray for pulmonary and bone metastatic deposits respectively, and sonograms for abdominal tumour loads.Between July 1984 and July 1992, 320 patients with histologically proven advanced stage III and IV carcinoma of any site in the head and neck region were seen at the Division of Othorhinolaryngology and at the Service of Chemotherapy of the University of Palermo, Italy. Among these patients, 40 patients with recurrent and/or metastatic NPC responded to the above-mentioned elegibility criteria. These patients ha...

No abstract

Bladder cancers frequently exhibit an increased number of epidermal growth factor receptors (EGFR) in comparison to normal urothelium. The EGFR could potentially be a target for toxic conjugates. The aim of our study was to compare the expression of EGFR in metastases with concurrent or primary tumour in the urinary bladder using immunohistochemical techniques and a monoclonal antibody. Tumour material from 20 patients was investigated. The majority (13/20) of the metastases were homogeneously stained and showed a moderate to strong membranous staining for EGFR. The expression of EGFR in primary bladder tumours and metastases was similar. There was no indication that tumour tissue exposed to chemotherapy or radiation had a decreased number of EGFR. Targeting of the EGFR thus seems potentially applicable to metastatic disease. Int. J. Cancer 76:189–193, 1998.© 1998 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.