Histamine and histamine receptor antagonists in cancer biology.

Histamine has been demonstrated to be involved in cell proliferation, embryonic development, and tumour growth. These various biological effects are mediated through the activation of specific histamine receptors (H1, H2, H3, and H4) that differ in their tissue expression patterns and functions. Although many in vitro and in vivo studies of the modulatory roles of histamine in tumour development and metastasis have been reported, the effect of histamine in the progression of some types of tumours remains controversial; however, recent findings on the role of histamine in the immune system have shed new light on this question. This review focuses on the recent advances in understanding the roles of histamine and its receptors in tumour biology. We report our recent observations of the anti-tumoural effect of H1 histamine antagonists on experimental and human melanomas. We have found that in spite of exogenous histamine stimulated human melanoma cell proliferation, clonogenic ability and migration activity in a dose-dependent manner, the melanoma tumour growth was not modulated by in vivo histamine treatment. On the contrary, terfenadine-treatment in vitro induced melanoma cell death by apoptosis and in vivo terfenadine treatment significantly inhibited tumour growth in murine models. These observations increase our understanding of cancer biology and may inspire novel anticancer therapeutic strategies.

Multiple pilomatricomas in association with trisomy 9.

Multiple appearance of pilomatricoma is a rare phenomenon that has been associated with some diseases like Gardner syndrome, myotonic dystrophy, and Rubinstein-Taybi syndrome. We present a case of association of multiple pilomatricoma and trisomy 9, which represents the third published in literature. As a result of the small prevalence of these two entities, we believe they could be related.