Systematic Review of Gossypol/at-101 in Cancer Clinical Trials

a
) and outcome (
b
). (
a
) 
The diagram illustrates the total number of conducted clinical trials as a circle. The numbers in the 
four sections correspond to the number of studies performed in each case. The light blue sections 
represent the proportion of studies performed with gossypol/AT-101 as single agent, light orange 
sections represent the proportion of combined therapies (gossypol/AT-101 and standard anticancer 
protocols). Each section is further subdivided by study phase and contains colored boxes with the 
corresponding references in brackets. Each color represents one of the study outcomes defined in 
(
b
). (
b
) The bar divides the study outcomes into six categories. Each of the six different categories 
contains the number of studies performed and is color-coded according to the study outcome. 
After a long period of testing of gossypol/AT-101 against different tumor entities as 
monotherapy or in combination with other anti-tumor drugs, Song et al. recently 
demonstrated an encouraging success regarding the treatment of patients with 
gastroesophageal carcinoma. In contrast to other investigations, where the benefits of the 
treatment were observed either in some subjects or in a special sub-group of patients, there 
are at least three major differences in this new study. For the first time, the researchers 
focused on cancer stem cells in addition to anti-apoptotic pathways, which often cause 
therapy residence. Second, besides the standard chemotherapeutic regimes of 
Figure 4.
Graphical representation of the results of reviewed studies in cancer clinical trials analyzing
the administration of gossypol/AT-101 as a single agent or in combination with standard anticancer
treatments. The pie chart is stratified according to study design (
a
) and outcome (