Synthesis and testing of anticonvulsant properties of 5-benzylidene derivatives of 3-o-, 3-m- I 3-p-chlorophenyl-2-thiohydantoin]

Ten new 3-(o-, 3-(m- and 3-(p-chlorophenyl)-5-benzylidene derivatives of 2-thiohydantoin were obtained. Their IR spectra were recorded. The obtained compounds were tested for anticonvulsant activity using the test of minimal and maximal pentetrazol shock in mice, and the MES test in rats.     

三个统一:21世纪中医学发展取向的思考

21世纪中医学的发展，面临着理顺民族性表述方式与国际性科学内涵关系的问题，因此必须辩证地把握结构与机能、实证科学手段与人文精神、过程与结果之间的谐调统一，这样既符合中医学术体系特征，又能与当代生命科学研究保持一致。     

Phase II trial of gallium nitrate,amonafide and teniposide in metastatic non-small cell lung cancer

Summary Fifty-five patients with metastatic non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) were entered into this phase II randomized study for evaluating three new agents: gallium nitrate, amonafide and teniposide. The patients had to have ECOG performance status 0 or 1, no prior chemotherapy, and adequate hematological, hepatic and renal functions. Forty-seven patients were eligible and evaluable. Fourteen were randomized to receive gallium nitrate, 18 to amonafide and 15 to teniposide. Seventy-four percent of eligible patients were male. The majority of patients (89%) had an ECOG performance status 1. ECOG grade 4 toxicity occurred twice in patients on gallium nitrate, seven times on amonafide and 18 times on teniposide. The cause of death was attributed to amonafide in one patient (from sepsis) and to teniposide in two patients (due to infection and leukopenia). There was no objective response in all the patients entered. The overall survival times ranged from 2 weeks to 156 weeks with a median of 23 weeks. There were no survival differences among the three treatment arms. We conclude that gallium nitrate, amonafide and teniposide are inactive in metastatic NSCLC and do not warrant any further testing in this disease.The contents of this study is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Cancer Institute.     

Orbital Hydatid Cyst: CT and MRI

Orbital hydatid cyst is rare. We present a case with CT and MRI, emphasizing the superiority of the latter. Received: 19 August 1996 Accepted: 9 September 1996     

Circular stereotactic callosotomy: A preliminary report

Summary The authors propose a new method for performing Stereotactic callosotomy, which they have named circular callosotomy. The operating device is the original Riechert-Mundinger's string electrode, which can be protruded through a side window and by rotating the probe it is possible to cut the commisural pathways to the extent required. The anatomical results of the operation can be checked using MRI scanning.     

Expression of human mu or alpha class glutathione S-transferases in stably transfected human MCF-7 breast cancer cells: effect on cellular sensitivity to cytotoxic agents.

Increased expression of certain glutathione S-transferase (GST) isoenzymes has frequently been associated with the development of resistance to alkylating agents and other classes of antineoplastic drugs in drug-selected cell lines. The question arises whether this phenomenon is causal or is a stress-induced response associated with drug resistance in these cell lines. We have constructed mammalian expression vectors containing the human GST mu and GST alpha 2 (Ha2) cDNAs and stably transfected them into the human breast cancer cell line MCF-7. Whereas the parental and pSV2neo-transfected cell lines display low GST activity, three individual transfected clones were identified in each group that expressed either GST mu or GST alpha 2. The range of GST activities was similar to those observed in cells selected for anticancer drug resistance. The GST mu specific activities were 56, 150, and 340 mlU/mg, compared with 10 mlU/mg of endogenous GST mu in control lines. Specific activities in GST alpha 2-transfected clones were 17, 28, and 52 mlU/mg, compared with no detectable alpha class GST in control lines. These clonal lines and the parental and pSV2neo-transfected control lines were tested for sensitivity to antineoplastic agents and other cytotoxic compounds. The clones with the highest activity in each group were 1.7-fold (GST alpha 2) to 2.1-fold (GST mu) resistant to the toxic effects of ethacrynic acid, a known substrate for GSTs. However, the GST-transfected cell lines were not resistant to doxorubicin, L-phenylalanine mustard, bis(2-chloroethyl)-1-nitrosourea, cisplatin, chlorambucil, or the GST substrates 1-chloro-2,4-dinitrobenzene or tert-butyl hydroperoxide. Thus, although L-phenylalanine mustard, bis(2-chloroethyl)-1-nitrosourea, chlorambucil, tert-butyl hydroperoxide, and 1-chloro-2,4-dinitrobenzene are known to be metabolized by glutathione-dependent GST-catalyzed reactions, there was no protection against any of these agents in MCF-7 cell lines overexpressing GST mu or GST alpha 2. We conclude that, at the levels of GST obtained in this transfection model system, overexpression of GST mu or GST alpha 2 is not by itself sufficient to confer resistance to these anticancer agents. These studies do not exclude the possibility that GST may be a marker of drug resistance or that other gene products not expressed in MCF-7 cells might cooperate with GST to confer drug resistance.     

Age and gender related changes in stereoselective pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of verapamil and norverapamil.

1. Pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of R- and S-verapamil and R- and S-norverapamil were studied at steady state following administration of 180 mg verapamil delivered by a controlled-release gastrointestinal therapeutic system (COER-verapamil). 2. Of the 30 young (19 to 43 years) and 30 elderly subjects (65 to 80 years) enrolled, approximately half of each age group were women; all subjects were healthy and none were smokers. 3. Mean R- and S-verapamil and R- and S-norverapamil Cmax, Cmin, and AUC values for elderly subjects were 1.2 to 2.2 times greater than those for young subjects; these differences were statistically significant at P < 0.05. Median tmax values for young and elderly subjects were not significantly different for any enantiomer. The mean half-life values of R- and S-verapamil for elderly subjects were approximately 20 h compared with approximately 13 h for young subjects, respectively. The mean half-life values of R- and S-norverapamil for elderly subjects were approximately 31 h and 20 h, respectively, compared with approximately 19 h and 21 h for young subjects, respectively. 4. In both age groups, the mean plasma verapamil concentrations of each enantiomer were higher for women than for men at all time points. 5. Mean arterial pressure (MAP) had a significant correlation to R- (r2 = 0.86) and S-verapamil (r2 = 0.87) concentration values that was not influenced by either gender or age of the patient. Change in PR-interval also had a significant correlation to R- and S-verapamil concentration values. However, the sensitivity of the response to changes in R- and S-verapamil concentration values in elderly subjects was about 1/5 of that in younger subjects.     

反相高效液相色谱法测定牛黄类中成药中胆汁酸的含量

反相高效液相色谱法测定牛黄类中成药中胆汁酸的含量倪坤仪，王建，陈健，郁建，屠树滋（中国药科大学２１０００９）含牛黄的中成药种类很多，在医疗中具有广泛的用途。中药牛黄中主要成分为胆汁酸和胆红素。本文主要研究用ＨＰＬＣ法测定牛黄以及含牛黄中成药中胆汁酸的...     

Organization of the state space of a simple recurrent network before and after training on recursive linguistic structures.

Recurrent neural networks are often employed in the cognitive science community to process symbol sequences that represent various natural language structures. The aim is to study possible neural mechanisms of language processing and aid in development of artificial language processing systems. We used data sets containing recursive linguistic structures and trained the Elman simple recurrent network (SRN) for the next-symbol prediction task. Concentrating on neuron activation clusters in the recurrent layer of SRN we investigate the network state space organization before and after training. Given a SRN and a training stream, we construct predictive models, called neural prediction machines, that directly employ the state space dynamics of the network. We demonstrate two important properties of representations of recursive symbol series in the SRN. First, the clusters of recurrent activations emerging before training are meaningful and correspond to Markov prediction contexts. We show that prediction states that naturally arise in the SRN initialized with small random weights approximately correspond to states of Variable Memory Length Markov Models (VLMM) based on individual symbols (i.e. words). Second, we demonstrate that during training, the SRN reorganizes its state space according to word categories and their grammatical subcategories, and the next-symbol prediction is again based on the VLMM strategy. However, after training, the prediction is based on word categories and their grammatical subcategories rather than individual words. Our conclusion holds for small depths of recursions that are comparable to human performances. The methods of SRN training and analysis of its state space introduced in this paper are of a general nature and can be used for investigation of processing of any other symbol time series by means of SRN.