Book Reviews

Oestrogen Receptors and the Response of Metastatic Breast Cancer to Aminoglutethimide or Tamoxifen

“…Both of the treatments used in this study proved to be relatively non-toxic, and where side effects occurred they were usually mild and readily managed without withdrawing treatment. Others have had similar experiences with tamoxifen (Ward, 1973) and aminoglutethimide (Smith et alii, 1978). In view of this low toxicity it could be argued that these treatments could reasonably be applied regardless of the results of a predictive measurement, since there is little associated patient risk.…”

“…A NUMBER of non-surgical techniques of endocrine manipulation are now available for the management of advanced breast cancer. The anti-oestrogen, tamoxifen, acts to impair the intracellular action of oestrogens (Heel et alii, 1978) and has proven to be a relatively non-toxic treatment, useful particularly in the postmenopausal subject (Ward, 1973). Recently there has also been a renewal of interest in adrenal suppression in metastatic breast cancer using therapy with aminoglutethimide (Lipton and Santen, 1974) as an alternative to surgical adrenalectomy.…”

Oxidation of bisnaphthols to spironaphthalenones, revisited

“…The product was believed to be a peroxide, but on the basis of chemical evidence the spirodienone structure 2 was later reassigned to it [2,3]. The spirodienone derivatives of substituted and unsubstituted bis(naphthol)methanes have been the subject of numerous studies and remain one of the most thoroughly studied members of the spirodienone family [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]. The Abel's ketone 2 was also prepared by oxidizing 1 with NaBiO 3 in refluxing benzene in 3 hours [18].…”