Abraxis BioScience Inc.

Glossary

actinomycetes	Any of various filamentous, mostly anaerobic bacteria.
anastomosis	The direct or indirect joining of separate parts, such as blood vessels.
aneurysm	An abnormal widening or ballooning of a portion of an artery, related to weakness in the wall of the blood vessel. Some common locations for aneurysms include the aorta, the brain, the leg, and the intestine.
angiogenesis	Formation and development of new blood vessels in the body. When coronary arteries are blocked or narrowed by arteriosclerosis, angiogenetic products can stimulate development of new blood vessels and often restore blood flow. Angiogenesis is required for malignant tumors to metastasize because it provides the newly created blood supply that tumors require.
angioplasty	A medical procedure in which a balloon is used to open narrowed or blocked blood vessels of the heart (coronary arteries).
antiangiogenic	Impact of any compound that works to prevent angiogenesis (ie, formation and development of new blood vessels). Because angiogenesis is required for malignant tumors to grow and spread, antiangiogenic compounds act by starving cancerous tumors of the blood supply (ie, new blood vessels) tumors need to survive and grow.
arteriovenous	The connection between arteries and veins or something affecting arteries and veins.
atherosclerosis	A disease that is characterized by deposits of plaques on the inside of blood vessel walls, a decrease in elasticity, and a thickening of the walls of the body's arteries.
bacterium, bacteria	A large group of microscopic organisms with round, rod-like, spiral, or filamentous unicellular or noncellular bodies. Bacteria often aggregate into colonies. They are enclosed by a cell wall or membrane and lack fully differentiated nuclei.
balloon angioplasty	A medical procedure in which a balloon is used to open narrowed or blocked blood vessels of the heart (coronary arteries).
bioavailable, bioavailability	Being or the degree to which or rate to which a drug or other substance is absorbed or otherwise becomes available for physiological activity after administration.
chronic	A continuous or persistent condition that is not easily or quickly resolved.
Cremophor®	Trade name for a castor oil-based solvent used to dissolve compounds that are water insoluble.
cytotoxic	A chemical, drug, or molecule that is poisonous to cells. Chemotherapeutic drugs are cytotoxic to cancer cells and to some normal, rapidly dividing cells.
depolymerization	The dismantling of a polymer, eg, a polypeptide chain, into individual component units, eg, amino acids.
dimer	A molecule that consists of 2 similar, but not necessarily identical subunits.
DMSO	Abbreviation for dimethyl sulfoxide. It is a powerful solvent and can penetrate animal tissues.
endothelium	Layer of epithelial cells that line blood vessels in the body.
epithelium	Cellular tissue that covers a free surface or lines a hollow structure (ie, a tube) or cavity of the body.
fungus, fungi	A major group of saprophytic and parasitic plants that lack chlorophyll and flowers. This group included molds, toadstools, rusts, mildews, smuts, ergot, mushrooms, and yeasts.
hemodialysis	A method of removing toxic substances (impurities or wastes) from the blood when the kidneys are unable to do so. Dialysis is most frequently used for patients who have kidney failure. Hemodialysis circulates the patient’s blood through special filters outside the body.
Hsp90	Abbreviation for heat-shock proteins 90, a class of molecular chaperones whose members act in the mechanism of signal transduction by steroid receptors.
hyperplasia	The increased cell production in a normal tissue or an organ (ie, an excess of normal tissue).
multidrug resistance	The insensitivity of various tumors to a variety of chemically related anticancer drugs. Multidrug resistance is mediated by a process of inactivating the drug or removing it from the target tumor cells.
microtubule	Tiny hollow filaments within eukaryotic cells that are made of tubulin (a protein). Some microtubules give the cell its shape by acting as internal scaffolding. Other microtubules are the move proteins within cells through vesicular transport, including moving apart the paired chromosomes within nuclear DNA of cells undergoing meiosis. Microtubule proteins are present in bacterial cells and here they power flagella, the whip-like structures used by some bacteria to move; and cilia, the tiny hair-like projections that line many mucosal surfaces in humans that are used to clean mucosal surfaces by sweeping particles like dust away. Within neurons, microtubules transport mRNA from the nucleus to the ribosomes in the dendrites, where the mRNAs are translated into protein molecules.
morbidity	A diseased condition or state, the incidence of a disease or all diseases in a population.
mTOR	mTOR inhibitors are protein kinases that involved in growth-related processes, such as transcription and translation (ie, protein synthesis). Blocking mTOR effectively starves cancer cells by interfering with cell growth, cell division, metabolism, and angiogenesis.
nanoparticle	Term used to refer to a variety of nanometer-size particles.
nanotechnology	The science of nanoparticles.
occlusion	The presence of something that closes a structure, such as a blood vessel.
patency	The state of being freely open, eg, a coronary artery.
percutaneous	Something performed through the skin, rather through an open surgical cut.
pharmacokinetics	The study of the reactions between drugs or synthetic food ingredients and tissues and organs. Typically, pharmacokinetic studies measure absorption (ie, transport of the test substance into the bloodstream); distribution (ie, initial disposition, concentration, or behavior of the test substance in the body after it enters the body); metabolism (ie, the breakdown of the substance into other compounds and the ultimate disposition of those compounds; and elimination (ie, the speed and thoroughness with which the substance is excreted or otherwise removed from the body).
protein kinase inhibitor	Enzymes capable of stopping the phosphorylation (covalently bonding a phosphate group to) certain amino acid residues in specific proteins. Protein kinases and protein kinase inhibitors have crucial roles in the regulation of signaling within and between cells.
restenosis	The recurrence of stenosis after corrective surgery or the narrowing of a structure (usually a coronary artery) after the removal or reduction of a previous narrowing.
revascularization	Reestablishment of a blood supply to a part of the body.
SPARC	Abbreviation for secreted protein acidic and rich in cysteine. SPARC is a matricellular protein upregulated in aggressive cancers but absent in normal tissues. Albumin binds to SPARC both in vitro and in vivo. SPARC expression may play a role in increased tumor distribution and clinical effectiveness of albumin-bound paclitaxel in breast cancer.
stenosis	A constriction or narrowing of a duct or a passage.
stent, stenting	Device often used to support tissues while healing takes place. It is commonly used to treat conditions that result when arteries narrow or become blocked. A stent can keep blood vessels open after a surgical procedure and is commonly used for the treatment of coronary artery disease. An intraluminal coronary artery stent is a small, self-expanding, metal mesh tube that is placed within a coronary artery to keep the vessel open. It may be used during coronary artery bypass graft surgery to keep the grafted vessel open, after balloon angioplasty to prevent reclosure of the blood vessel, or during other heart surgeries. A drug-eluting stent is a tiny mesh tube coated with medication to help prevent reblockage of the coronary arteries (restenosis.) It is left permanently in the artery, and slowly releases a drug that prevents the build-up of tissue that leads to restenosis.
taxane	A widely used class of chemotherapy drugs, including paclitaxel and docetaxel. Paclitaxel was originally derived from the Pacificyew tree. The principal mechanism of the taxane class is inhibition of microtubule function. Microtubules are essential to cell division, and taxanes therefore stop cells from properly dividing.
thrombosis	The intravascular (i.e., inside of blood vessel) formation of a blood clot.
time to progression	The length of time between when a patient first begins therapy of a cancer treatment and a subsequent relapse (additional spreading or growing of the cancer).
topoisomerase-1	An enzyme that relaxes negatively supercoiled DNA but does not relax positively supercoiled DNA.
transalveolar transcytosis	Process of transport of material across the epithelium of the alveolae, the small thin-walled sacs in the lung used for oxygen exchange.
transduction, signal	The reception and conversion of a chemical message by a cell. When a hormone, drug, neurotransmitter, or other signal chemical binds to the receptor on the exterior of the cell's plasma membrane, the receptor activates a protein that causes an effector inside cell to produce a signal l inside cell, which causes the cell to react to the original external chemical signal received.
transcription	A step in the process of protein synthesis. Transcription is the process by which specialized RNA, messenger RNA or mRNA, copies specific parts of DNA.
xenograft	An implanted tumor or organ from one species to another organism in a different species.