Hyperthermia therapy employs artificial heat to treat malignant tumors. Hyperthermia uses a variety of physical energy to produce thermal effects in the body tissue. Hyperthermia elevates the temperature of tumor tissues to a certain degree and makes it maintained for a certain period of time to kill cancer cells and prevent normal cells from damage. Compared with other conventional therapy, hyperthermia has its special advantages and has become one of the novel comprehensive medical treatments for cancer therapy. This paper briefly reviews the action mechanism on hyperthermia against tumors and its clinical application in the treatment of gastrointestinal cancer.

Objective:To silence ERCC2 (excision repair cross-complementing rodent repair deficiency,complementatin group 2,ERCC2) expression in esophageal cancer KYSE150 cells by small interfering RNA (siRNA) and observe the altered sensitivity of KYSE150 cells to paclitaxel (PTX) and elucidate the mechanism underlying the reversion of the PTX resistance of KYSE150 cells. Methods:ERCC2-targeted siRNA was synthesized in vitro and transiently transfected into ERCC2 overexpressing KYSE150 cells via Lipofectamine mediation. The mRNA and protein expression levels of ERCC2 were determined by using RT-PCR and FCM method, respectively. The sensitivity of KYSE150 cells to PTX was measured by MTT assay before and after siRNA transfection. Results:RT-PCR results suggested that the specific bands of ERCC2 mRNA were not detected in si-ERCC2 group at 24, 48 and 72 h post transfection. FCM results indicated that the expression levels of ERCC2 protein gradually decreased by 31.2%, 51.6% and 60.0% at 24, 48 and 72 h respectively(P<0.01). The IC_(50) value of PTX for ERCC2-silencing KYSE150 cells was (6.32±0.87) μg/mL, lower than that for control cells (P<0.01). Conclusion:siRNA successfully silenced the expressions of target gene ERCC2 at both the transcription and translation levels. Silencing ERCC2 expression partly reversed the resistance of KYSE150 cells to PTX.

Objective:To investigate the feasibility of detecting excision repair cross-complementing 1(ERCC1)and ERCC2 in peripheral venous blood instead of cancer tissues from esophageal squamous cell carcinoma patients. Methods:The expressions of ERCC1 and ERCC2 mRNA were detected by using RT-PCR in 39 cases of peripheral venous blood samples, esophageal squamous cell carcinoma tissues, and adjacent normal tissues. ELISA was used to determine the levels of ERCC1 and ERCC2 proteins in serum. The periphe-ral blood from 10 healthy volunteers was used as control. Results:Expression levels of ERCC1 and ERCC2 mRNA and protein were significantly higher in peripheral blood from healthy control than those in esophageal carcinoma patients (P<0.05). There was a positive correlation between the expression of ERCC1 and ERCC2 mRNA in peripheral blood and cancer tissues (P<0.01). Conclusion:The expression levels of ERCC1 and ERCC2 mRNA in peripheral blood can indirectly reflect their expression levels in human esophageal squamous cell carcinoma tissues.