[Failure to augment the tissue concentration of Adriamycin by simultaneous intra-arterial application of urokinase]

A previous study by the authors has made it clear that regional arterial infusion of Adriamycin (ADM) increases the drug concentration in the gastric tissue and the regional lymph nodes. In order to obtain further augmentation of the ADM concentration, simultaneous arterial infusion of ADM and Urokinase (UK), as a lysosome labilizer, was tried in the present study. ADM and UK were infused in three different ways through the left gastric artery on laparotomy, that is, a mixture of both in the first group, ADM followed by UK in the second group and ADM after UK in the third group. No augmentation of tissue ADM was obtained by any of these three methods and ADM concentration in gastric tumors, gastric wall and regional lymph nodes was rather lower than that using ADM only. A similar tendency was observed in the adjacent organs; liver, pancreas and spleen. Furthermore, the three-year survival rates of these groups were not statistically significant against the control group treated with ADM only.