[Pharmacological and clinical profile of anti-human IL-6 receptor antibody (tocilizumab, ACTEMRA), a novel therapeutic drug for Castleman's disease]

Oncogenic STAT Transcription Factors as Targets for Cancer Therapy: Innovative Strategies and Clinical Translation

Despite advances in our understanding of molecular aspects of oncogenesis, cancer remains a leading cause of death. The malignant behavior of a cancer cell is driven by the inappropriate activation of transcription factors. In particular, signal transducers and activators of transcription (STATs), which regulate many critical cellular processes such as proliferation, apoptosis, and differentiation, are frequently activated inappropriately in a wide spectrum of human cancers. Multiple signaling pathways converge on the STATs, highlighting their importance in the development and progression of oncogenic diseases. STAT3 and STAT5 are two members of the STAT protein family that are the most frequently activated in cancers and can drive cancer pathogenesis directly. The development of inhibitors targeting STAT3 and STAT5 has been the subject of intense investigations in the last decade, although effective treatment options remain limited. In this review, we investigate the specific roles of STAT3 and STAT5 in normal physiology and cancer biology, discuss the opportunities and challenges in pharmacologically targeting STAT proteins and their upstream activators, and offer insights into novel therapeutic strategies to identify STAT inhibitors as cancer therapeutics.

Analysis of clinical characteristics and prognosis factors of 71 cases with HIV-negative Castleman's disease: hypoproteinemia is an unfavorable prognostic factor which should be treated appropriately

PURPOSE

HIV negative Castleman's disease has been reported as a group of poorly understood lymphoproliferative disorder, and we want to explore the clinical feature and prognosis factors of CD.

METHODS

We retrospectively collected the clinical information of 71 CD patients without HIV infection diagnosed in the first affiliated hospital of Zhengzhou university.

RESULTS

Different clinical classifications, including 35 patients (49.30%) with unicentric Castleman disease and 36 (50.7%) with multicentric Castleman disease, has their specific features compared with each other and unfavorable risk factors calculated by the univariate analysis. As for all of CD patients without HIV infection, there were 7 significant risk factors identified by the results of log-rank test, including clinical complaint, edema (hydrothorax, ascites, pelvic effusion), fatigue, anemia, hypoproteinemia and elevated serum β2-MG. Then, we created a Cox regression model of these clinical and statistic significant factors which indicated hypoproteinemia was an independent poor prognosis factors of CD in both univariate and multivariate analysis.

CONCLUSIONS

Our study emphasized the distinction of clinical characteristics between UCD and MCD and the importance of different poor risk factors of different clinical classifications which may directed more precise and appropriate treatment strategy.