---

Introduction: Cisplatin is a drug widely used as an antineoplastic drug for treatment of malignant tumors. But because of its side effects on the different systems especially kidney (nephrotoxic), the use of this drug is very limited. Clinical as well as, laboratory animal studies have supported this observations. In this research study we have used stereological technique (3-D) for finding the changes, due to nephrotoxic effect of this drug, in the number of glomeruli in kidney (numerical density and total number).
Materials and Methods: For experimental, 30 rats were separated by random sampling in to 3 groups of 10 animals cache. The first group received acute dose (7.5 mg/kg) of the drug (cisplatin) in serum physiology (experimental group). The second group received equivalent placebo dose in serum physiology through peritoneum (control). The third group received chronic dose (1.25 mg/kg) for 5 days, in serum physiology. All the 30 animals, after 96 hours, were anesthetized, dissected and their right kidneys were removed and placed in fixative (10% formalin). Whole kidney specimens were processed for stereology by special method of sectioning for physical disector and glomeruli number were counted.
Results: Number of glumeroli and numerical density was estimated for experimental groups (control, acute and chronic) was 31707, 30415 and 30802 as well 162, 119, and 140 respectively.
Conclusion: Stereological methods could be very useful for investigation of chemical drug effects in organs with good validity.

---

Background: All-trans retinoic acid(RA), an active metabolite of vitamin A, is widely used to induce cell differentiation. It has significant effects on growth and proliferation of epithelial cells. It also causes cell cycle arrest in G0/G1 phase and induces the apoptosis. cisplatin, a chemotherapy compound that cross-linking to DNA, and leads to apoptosis, it is commonly used for treatment of ovarian, head and neck, esophageal, gastric cancers and melanoma. Recent studies showed that RA enhances cytotoxic effects of cisplatin on melanoma and ovarian cancer. Our literature review showed that there is no previous study on the effect of RA in combination with cisplatin on esophageal cancer, hence current study conducted to investigate such combination treatment on esophageal derived cell, KYSE-30.

Materials and Methods: KYSE30 cell line was cultured in presence of different concentration of RA alone and in combination with cisplatin. Then, cell death was investigated by colonogenic assay and acridine orange/ ethedium bromide staining.

Results: The results showed that RA concentrations &ge15µM cause differentiation of KYSE30 to squamous cell morphology, while lower concentrations decreases the colony formation (p&le0.05). These effects were also observed in combination with cisplatin and RA. The best effects on cell death were observed in 10 µM of RA of combination with 5 and 10 µg/ml of cisplatin.

Conclusion: The results suggest that low concentration of RA in combination with cisplatin are more effective than cisplatin alone in terms of apoptosis and necrosis of esophageal cancer, KYSE-30.

---