A novel in situ permeation system and its utility in cancer tissue ablation

Medical uses for phenol in the urinary tract: A possible forgotten treatment (Review)

Phenol is a chemical compound that was first used medically as an antiseptic. At low concentrations, phenol exerts local anesthetic effects achieved through denervation; at high concentrations, it exerts a potent protein-denaturing effect that induces apoptosis. Phenol injection therapy has a long history of use in urology. It is reportedly effective for hemorrhagic cystitis, benign prostate hyperplasia, overactive bladder, hydrocele, bladder tumors, interstitial cystitis and other benign urologic diseases, and it is also used as a tool to decrease bleeding during prostate surgery. The present review article summarizes the medical applications of phenol in urological field. The articles available on the medical uses of phenol are primarily older and retrospective, involving small numbers of patients. In the absence of comparative studies with other treatments, it is impossible to determine the relative benefit of phenol. However, the treatment outcomes of phenol injection are fairly well-established. Phenol therapy may be an option for patients who are poor candidates for invasive treatment. Further studies are required, however, as are improvements in the injection technique to reduce the rate of complications.

Advances in drug delivery to high grade gliomas

If cancer is hard to be treated, brain cancer is even more, caused by the inability of many effective drugs given systemically to cross the blood brain and blood tumor barriers and reach adequate concentrations at the tumor sites. Effective delivery of drugs to brain cancer tissues is thus a necessary, albeit not sufficient, condition to effectively target the disease. In order to analyze the current status of research on drug delivery to high grade gliomas (HGG-WHO grades III and IV), the most frequent and aggressive brain cancers, a literature search was conducted in PubMed using the terms: "drug delivery and brain tumor" over the publication year 2015. Currently explored drug delivery techniques for HGG include the convection and permeabilization-enhanced deliveries, drug-releasing depots and Ommaya reservoirs. The efficacy/safety ratio widely varies among these techniques and the success of current efforts to increase this ratio widely varies as well.