According to the 2012 estimates,esophageal cancer(EC)was the fifth commonly diagnosed cancer and the forth leading cause of cancer -related death .The incidence and mortality rates of EC have been increasing in China .Combined -modality therapy for EC is well accepted , and molecular targeted therapy be-comes a research area.Nowadays,multiple agents have been developed and studied in phase Ⅱ/Ⅲtrials,mainly including cetuximab,erlotinib,trastuzumab,bevacizumab.In this review,we focus on the development of molecular targeted therapy for EC .

Taste-masking effect of pharmaceutical formulation is important for the pharmacy worker to carry out study on taste-masking of pharmaceutical formulation. This study discussed the feasibility of electronic tongue in the evaluation of taste-masking effect. The berberine hydrochloride was used as model drug of bitterness. Sodium cycla-mate, 2,4-Dihydroxybenzoic acid and sodium cyclamate were used as bitterness inhibitors. Through detection of elec-tronic tongue, results from principal component analysis (PCA), and indexes such as distance of bitterness (D), dis-tance of bitterness reduction, inhibition rate (Ir), the determination was given on whether results from the bitterness inhibition of berberine hydrochloride and taste results from volunteers were the same. In addition, sodium cyclamate, which was the best bitterness inhibition, was made into different concentrations in order to optimize its using dosage. The data analysis results showed that in the berberine hydrochloride solution with the concentration of 0.005 mg/mL, the ranking order of the bitterness-masking efficiency was sodium cyclamate > 2,4-Dihydroxybenzoic acid > sodium acetate anhydrous. Along with the increasing concentration of sodium cyclamate, the taste-masking effect is better. However, after the concentration level of 0.2%, the change on taste-masking effect was relatively small. In the prac-tical work, the concentration of sodium cyclamate can be selected at the level of 0.2%. This experiment effect was the same as the human taste results. This study showed that the electronic tongue may be a useful tool in the evalua-tion of taste-masking efficiency to some extent.

This paper was aimed to study the quantitation method of bitterness intensity of bitter drug, and to ex-plore the mutual relations between the bitterness intensity and the concentration of bitter drugs solution. The mod-el drug of berberine hydrochloride, which was made into a series of solutions of different concentrations, was ap-plied. Twenty volunteers, who were screened, trained and qualified, tasted the different concentration of aqueous solution, with the purpose of detecting the rank bitterness intensity. After analyzing the features of the data and testing the logarithm model and Weibull curve model, as well as nonlinear fitting, we finally set up the appropri-ate relationship curve between the concentration and the bitterness intensity. There is a good curve positive corre-lation between the bitterness intensity and the concentration, which is consistent with the Weibull curve model (R2= 0.9973, RMSE = 0.0976, RMSECV = 0.1453). The fitting degree of the model established in this paper is high, which provides a reference for quantitation and forecast of the drug bitterness.

Objective To investigate the effect of small interfering RNA (siRNA) interference in the expression of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) on the radiosensitivity of esophageal squamous carcinoma (Eca-109) and esophageal adenocarcinoma (OE-19) cell lines.Methods Human Eca-109 and OE-19 cell lines were selected as study subjects.Various EGFR-siRNA and negative siRNA were synthesized chemically through lipofection.Reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction and Western blot were applied to measure the expression of EGFR before and after transfection,and the CCK8 assay was applied to analyze the influence of transfection on cell proliferation.Blank control groups of Eca-109 and OE-19 cells (O1 and O2 groups),simple irradiation groups (R1 and R2 groups),and EGFR-siRNA irradiation groups (E-R1 and E-R2 groups) were set,and the doses for single irradiation were 0,2,4,6,and 8 Gy.The colony-forming assay was applied to calculate survival fraction (SF) and sensitization enhancement ratio (SERD0 ratio),and flow cytometry was applied to evaluate the influence of EGFR-siRNA combined with radiotherapy on cell cycle distribution and apoptosis rate,and the dose for single irradiation was 6 Gy.Results The expression of EGFR in both cell lines was significantly down-regulated by EGFR-siRNA,and the inhibition rate of cell proliferation by transfection was＜5％ (4.9％ and 4.5％,respectively).The results of colony-forming assay showed that the cells in the E-R1 and E-R2 groups had a lower SF than those in the O1 and O2 groups,with an SERD0ratio of 1.40 and 1.01,respectively.The results from flow cytometry showed that compared with the E-R2 group,the E-R1 group had a higher proportion of cells in G2/M phase and a lower proportion of cells in S phase after irradiation (P=0.016 and 0.028),as well as a higher apoptosis rate (P=0.007).Conclusions Compared with the cell line OE-19,the cell line Eca-109 has a significantly increased radiosensitivity when treated with siRNA interference in EGFR expression.