A Special Issue with a Special Offer: Downloads for Donations*

The International Journal of Hyperthermia marked Breast Cancer Awareness Month with a timely Special Issue on the use of hyperthermia as a treatment for this disease. To mark the Special Issue, Informa Healthcare is donating $1 for each download* of the issue’s free-access articles to Susan G. Komen for the Cure®. Susan G. Komen for the Cure® is the world's largest breast cancer charity dedicated to education and research about causes, treatment and the search for a cure.

To date, there have been 3,512 downloads of articles from the Special Issue!

Hyperthermia, as its name suggests, involves raising tumor temperature and the treatment is used to fight disease. Modern advancements in hyperthermia biology have led to refinements for individualized thermochemotherapy approaches to treatments as well as interesting potential for exploiting hyperthermia in conjunction with cancer vaccines. Interest in hyperthermia as a treatment for breast cancer has led to significant advances and research activity which, in turn, has had a significant impact on treatment protocol. Thanks to the volume of research and the impact of published articles, the National Comprehensive Cancer Network (NCCN) now includes hyperthermia in their Breast Cancer Guidelines as a treatment for recurrent cancer.

“The breadth of contributions from the authors in this issue highlights the tremendous progress that has occurred in the role of hyperthermia for the treatment of breast cancer,” says Dr Joan Bull, Co-Guest Editor of the Special Edition.. “This subject has garnered broad national and international interest in this cutting-edge treatment for one of the world’s most high-profile and, unfortunately, prolific diseases.” To view the complete list of articles in the issue, please click here. For more information on the Special Issue, please contact Senior Managing Editor Didi Peng.


*This applies to a full text download of any article from the Special Issue (Volume 26 Issue 7) with a maximum donation of up to $1,500.00.

Profile: Dimitri Mikhailidis

It seems appropriate that our first profile for the Informa Pharmaceutical Science blog should feature Dr. Dimitri P. Mikhailidis. Dimitri is currently Editor-In-Chief of four journals published by Informa Pharmaceutical Science: Expert Opinion on Investigational Drugs, Expert Opinion on Therapeutic Targets, Expert Opinion on Pharmacotherapy, and Current Medical Research and Opinion. Beyond Dimitri's editorial role, he has been an author on numerous original research articles, reviews, and editorials, with over 60 published articles in Expert Opinion and CMRO since 2000. Lest we give the impression that Dimitri favours our journals over others click here to see his 600+ Pubmed listings.

Dimitri is currently the Academic Head & Honorary Consultant to the Department of Clinical Biochemistry at the Royal Free University College Medical School, University College London, and he holds Visiting Professor positions at Robert Gordon University (Scotland) and University of Ioannina Medical School (Greece). Dimitri has travelled widely to present his research, having lectured in 40 countries around the world. Beyond the editorial posts he holds with the Informa Pharmaceutical Science journals, Dimitri is also Editor-in-Chief of four other medical journals, and holds other editorial positions with several more. And sometimes, apparently, he eats and sleeps, although we have no empirical evidence to support this claim.

Research by Dimitri and his network of collaborators primarily focuses on treatment and prevention of cardiovascular disease, and Dimitri was awarded the British Medical Association (BMA) award for vascular research in 1995. His articles cover a broad spectrum of topics: many are written with an eye towards utility for current clinicians, some cast needed attention on new promising therapies in the drug development pipeline, while still others focus on future directions for research in cardiovascular disease. A notable recent paper published in EOP, authored by Dimitri and his colleague Martin Press from the Royal Free Hospital, reviewed the importance of targeting multiple risk factors, including both traditional and novel cardiometabolic factors, in the prevention of cardiovascular events in patients with type 2 diabetes (available for free download). In another recent publication, an editorial commentary in the March 2008 issue of CMRO, Dimitri and his colleagues present an interesting discussion on how age affects how cholesterol levels can and should be used to predict vascular risk and the implications for elderly patients (available for free download).

Dimitri's most recent article, an editorial in CMRO, is likely to create some waves in the cardiovascular community. The editorial focuses on the growing controversy over the potential danger of abruptly stopping statin use in high-risk patients. Instead of giving away the punchline, read the paper for free here.

How Evolutionary Biology Can Help Design Novel Anti-Viral Drugs

While the concept of evolutionary medicine has been around for well over fifty years, the collaboration between evolutionary biology and medical research has proven less profitable than was predicted by early proponents of the field. However, recent efforts to fight rapidly evolving infectious viral pathogens have been increasingly relying on the underlying understanding of viral evolution in order to design more effective antiviral drugs. Esteban Domingo and his colleagues in a recent perspective for Expert Opinion on Biological Therapy entitled "Future prospects for the treatment of rapidly evolving viral pathogens: insights from evolutionary biology" review the promise of drug design informed by evolutionary biology for overcoming viral escape mutations.

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New Hope for Old Chemotherapy?

While the vast majority of cancer research focuses on new therapeutic approaches, recent research on an unrelated topic has revealed new potential for old chemotherapy techniques. Anti-aging research by Valter Longo and colleagues at the University of Southern California chanced upon the idea while studying the effects differential stress resistance brought on by fasting. The groundbreaking study, published recently by Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, showed that fasting before chemotherapy has the potential to protect healthy cells from the deleterious effects of broad-spectrum chemotherapy, while cancer cells remain susceptible. Expert Opinion author Antonio Russo has reviewed this research and the potential for further development of this concept in a recent article in Expert Opinion on Therapeutic Targets.

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