Prospective study to assess the clinical efficacy of bone scintigraphy--comparative study of the efficacy in breast carcinoma and prostate carcinoma

Prospective study of bone scintigraphy was performed on 414 patients with breast carcinoma and 88 patients with prostate carcinoma. In 468 of them, confirmative diagnoses of bone, whether metastasis was existent or not, were made after the observations over a year. Finally, the incidences of bone metastasis were 11 percent for breast carcinoma and 54 percent for prostate carcinoma respectively. The efficacy of preoperative bone scintigraphy in breast carcinoma was comparable to that in prostate carcinoma with regard to improvement of predictive probability of bone metastasis: raising up the probability in the positive cases and bringing down in the negative cases.     

Solution behavior of styrene–ethylene oxide block copolymers

Hydrophobic–hydrophilic water-soluble block copolymers were prepared by “living” anionic polymerization. They consist of a polystyrene block and a polyethylene oxide block. From data on solution viscosity and high-resolution NMR in water, the molecular dimensions of the two-blocks copolymers are found similar to that of polyethylene glycols of the same molecular weight in the same solvent. These block copolymers exhibit microphase separation.     

Stereoselective hydrolysis of amino acid esters by dipeptide catalysts and by N-decanoyl-histidine in surfactant aggregate domains

The rate constants of hydrolysis of the enantiomers of amino acid nitrophenyl esters by catalytic domains composed of cationic surfactant aggregates and dipeptide catalysts or Ndecanoyl-L -histidine have been determined at pH 7.30. The dipeptide catalysts shows large rate enhancement and stereoselectivity in aggregate domains. The surfactant structural effects are examined by investigation of the rate constants and stereoselectivities, and the nature of stereoselective catalysis is discussed.     

Stereochemistry of cis- and trans-hinokiresinol and their estrogen-like activity

Naturally occurring phenylpropanoids, hinokiresinol (trans-hinokiresinol) and nyasol (cis-hinokiresinol) were found to possess appreciable estrogen receptor binding activity. Strong differences in activity were observed between the geometrical isomers and enantiomers. Among these, (3S)-cis-hinokiresinol displayed the highest activity, one order of magnitude greater than the activity of genistein. Furthermore, cis- and trans-hinokiresinol stimulated the proliferation of estrogen-dependent T47D breast cancer cells, and their stimulatory effects were blocked by an estrogen antagonist, indicating that the compounds are estrogen agonists. In addition, the absolute configuration of C-3 in (+)-cis-hinokiresinol has been assigned as S by comparison with the circular dichroism spectra of the hydrogenated products prepared from cis and trans ((3S)-trans-hinokiresinol: previously assigned) isomers. These results incidentally provide us with an unambiguous answer to contradictory reports regarding the assignment of the full stereochemisry of cis- and trans-hinokiresinol that have existed in the literature for more than two decades.