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Objective: To determine the safety and efficacy of targeted antitumor therapy with cisplatin/epinephrine injectable gel in patients with advanced squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck. Design: Two prospective, double-blind, placebo-controlled phase III trials of identical design. Crossover from blinded to open-label phase was permitted for patients with disease progression. Setting: Tertiary referral centers in North America and Europe. Patients: One hundred seventy-nine intensively pretreated patients with recurrent or refractory squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck. Intervention: Cisplatin/epinephrine injectable or placebo gel was administered by direct intratumoral injection; up to 6 weekly treatments. Dose was 0.25 mL of active or placebo gel per cubic centimeter of tumor up to 10 mL total. Patient benefit after local tumor control of the most symptomatic tumor was assessed by patients and physicians using the Treatment Goals Questionnaire. Main Outcome Measures: Local tumor response and patient benefit attributable to improvements in tumor-related symptoms. Results: Combined results for the 178 patients with evaluable data in the 2 trials confirmed objective tumor responses in 35 (29%) of 119 patients, including 23 (19%) complete responses achieved with cisplatin/epinephrine gel, vs 1 (2%) of 59 for placebo (P

Unusual cytogenetic findings are described in two patients with acute leukemia and rearrangements involving chromosomes 4 and 11. Both patients had clinical and phenotypic features often found in leukemia with t(4;11)(q21;q23). At initial diagnosis, one patient showed a standard t(4;11) with duplication of the 4q-translocation derivative. The latter finding has been described previously in a few patients with t(4;11) in association with disease progression. By analogy with the Ph1 chromosome in chronic myelogenous leukemia, duplication of the 4q-suggests that this derivative is the critical recombinant in the t(4;11). The second patient has a novel complex translocation, t(4;11;15)(q21;q23;q21). Analysis of this variant trans-location implies that the 11 q + is the consistent chromosome rearrangement in this type of leukemia. The apparent contradiction of the findings in these and other relevant reported cases reviewed here suggests that genes on both the 11q+ and 4q-recombinant chromosomes are important, in either the etiology or the progression of this disease.