Articles

A Comparative Study of the Toxicities and Local Recurrence of Conventional External Beam Radiotherapy versus Hypofractionated Radiotherapy in Breast Cancer Patients

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Introduction: Breast cancer is the most common cancer amongst women, which is treated by a multi-modality approach consisting of surgery, chemotherapy, radiotherapy, hormonal therapy, targeted therapy and immunotherapy.

Objective: The aim of the study is to compare the early and late treatment toxicities and the local recurrence following Conventional and Hypofractionated External Beam Radiotherapy in breast cancer patients after surgery.

Methods: A randomized study was conducted for two years including 150 patients. The patients were divided into two arms, with Arm-A receiving a total dose of 50Gy/25# and the Arm-B receiving 40Gy/16#.

Results: Early and late treatment toxicities were comparable in both the arms, except for skin toxicity which was more in the hypofractionated arm (Arm-B).  Local Recurrence was observed in Arm-A in 1 patient at Month 17 of follow-up, and in Arm-B at Month 13 in 1 patient and at Month 21 in 1 patient.

Conclusion: Hypofractionated radiotherapy given over a short period of time is comparable to Conventional fractionation radiotherapy without any significant statistical difference in terms of toxicities or local recurrence; with an added advantage of reduced treatment time, reduced duration of hospital stays, better patients’ compliance and reduced cost of treatment.

Potencial of Ursolic Acid Derivatives as Anti Breast Cancer

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Breast cancer is one of the biggest contributors to death in the world. Several treatment methods such as chemotherapy, hormonal therapy, radiation therapy, and surgery have shown side effects and resistance to breast cancer. Bioactive compounds are now an alternative in the development of drugs for breast cancer. Pearl grass is one of the plants reported to contain bioactive compounds that have inhibitory activity against breast cancer cells, namely ursolic acid. Most reports describe modifications of groups on its structure increasing the potential of ursolic acid as a breast cancer drug. This study aims to develop breast cancer drugs with raw materials of ursolic acid derivative compounds that are modified on the active side with groups that play an important role as anticancer using the Quantitative Structure and Activity Relationship (QSAR) method and molecular docking. The QSAR descriptors used are hydrophobic, steric, and electronic. The characters of each descriptor were computed using the SwissADME, Molinspiration, and NWChem programs with the DFT method, B3LYP function, and 6-31G* basis set. Molecular docking was performed using the AutoDock Tools 1.5.6 program and visualized using the Biovia Studio Visualizer program. The results showed that the regression coefficient (R2) of the QSAR model had a high correlation of 0.985 with the compound (1S,2R,4aS,6aR,6bR,10S,12aR,12bR,14bS)-10-amino-1,2,6a,6b,9,9, 12a-heptamethyl-14-oxoicosahydropicene-4a(2H)-carboxylic acid became the best compound validated by the results of molecular docking which has a binding energy of -7.92 kcal/mol and an inhibition constant of 1.42 nM so that it can inhibit MCF-7 cells in breast cancer.