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Abstract Background Cytology is a fast and simple modality for identifying malignancies and tumor histology. In this study, we analyzed the sensitivity of cytology for liver tumor biopsy and evaluated its potential for prompt clinical diagnosis. Methods This retrospective study included patients who had concurrently undergone conventional cytology, on‐site cytology, and histopathology for ultrasound‐guided liver tumor biopsies. In the case of malignant tumors, malignancy was first diagnosed, then preliminary clinical diagnosis was established using histology based on cytology and clinical information, followed by histopathological diagnosis. Sensitivity of malignancy detection was evaluated by comparison with histopathological diagnosis. Results Of the 191 tumors, 164 (85.9%) were malignant. The sensitivity of conventional cytology for malignancy detection was 97.6%. The sensitivity of non‐hepatocellular carcinoma (non‐HCC) (99.3%) detection was higher than that of the HCCs (87.5%; p = 0.001). The sensitivity of on‐site cytology for malignancy detection was as high as that of conventional cytology. Similar to conventional cytology, the sensitivity of on‐site cytology for non‐HCC detection (99.3%) was higher than that for HCCs (79.2%; p

Background: Cytology is a fast and simple modality for identifying malignancies and tumor histology. In this study, we analyzed the sensitivity of cytology for liver tumor biopsy and evaluated its potential for prompt clinical diagnosis. Methods: This retrospective study included patients who had concurrently undergone conventional cytology, on‐site cytology, and histopathology for ultrasound‐guided liver tumor biopsies. In the case of malignant tumors, malignancy was first diagnosed, then preliminary clinical diagnosis was established using histology based on cytology and clinical information, followed by histopathological diagnosis. Sensitivity of malignancy detection was evaluated by comparison with histopathological diagnosis. Results: Of the 191 tumors, 164 (85.9%) were malignant. The sensitivity of conventional cytology for malignancy detection was 97.6%. The sensitivity of non‐hepatocellular carcinoma (non‐HCC) (99.3%) detection was higher than that of the HCCs (87.5%; p = 0.001). The sensitivity of on‐site cytology for malignancy detection was as high as that of conventional cytology. Similar to conventional cytology, the sensitivity of on‐site cytology for non‐HCC detection (99.3%) was higher than that for HCCs (79.2%; p < 0.001). In most cases of non‐HCC tumors (126/140, 90.0%), accurate preliminary clinical diagnoses were obtained by combining on‐site cytology with clinical information. Conclusion: Cytology of liver tumor biopsy has high sensitivity for malignancy, especially in non‐HCC tumors. On‐site cytology can contribute to the prompt clinical diagnosis of non‐HCC tumors when combined with clinical information. This approach may be a reassuring modality for patients with severely advanced cancers requiring prompt clinical diagnosis and quick initiation of treatment owing to their deteriorating health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• T1a RCC treated with surgical resection had a recurrence rate of 5.4%. • The most common sites of recurrence were lungs, loco-regional, and bone. • Histology and grade were predictors for recurrence and cancer specific survival. Stage migration in renal cell carcinoma (RCC) has led to an increasing proportion of diagnosed small renal masses. Emerging knowledge regarding heterogeneity of RCC histologies and consequent impact on prognosis led us to further explore outcomes and predictive factors in surgically-treated T1a RCC. The INMARC database was queried for T1aN0M0 RCC. Patients were stratified into groups based on recurrence. Primary outcome was overall survival (OS). Multivariable analyses (MVA) were performed for factors associated with recurrence, cancer-specific (CSM), and all-cause mortality (ACM). Kaplan-Meier analyses (KMA) assessed survival by histology and grade. Subset analysis for time to recurrence was conducted for grade and histologic groups and compared with recent AUA follow-up guidelines [low-risk (AUA-LR), intermediate-risk (AUA-IR), high-risk (AUA-HR), and very-high risk (AUA-VHR) groups]. We analyzed 1,878 patients (median follow-up 35.2 months); 101 (5.4%) developed recurrence. MVA for recurrence demonstrated increasing age (P = 0.026), male sex (P = 0.043), diabetes (P = 0.007), high/unclassified grade (P < 0.001–0.007), and variant histology (P = 0.017) as independent risk factors for increased risk, while papillary (P = 0.016) and chromophobe (P = 0.049) were associated with decreased risk. MVA identified high/unclassified grade (P = 0.003–0.004) and pT3a upstaging (P = 0.043) as predictive factors for worsened risk of CSM while papillary (P = 0.034) was associated with improved risk. MVA for ACM demonstrated increasing age (P < 0.001), non-white (P < 0.001), high-grade (P = 0.022), variant histology (P = 0.049), recurrence (P = 0.004), and eGFR<45 at last follow-up (P < 0.001) to be independent risk factors. KMA comparing clear cell, chromophobe, papillary, and variant RCC revealed significant differences for 5-year CSS (P = 0.018) and RFS (P < 0.001), but not OS (P = 0.34). Median time to recurrence was 23.8 months for low-grade (AUA-LR), 17.3 months for high-grade (AUA-IR), 18 months for pT3a upstaging (AUA-HR), and 12 months for variant histology (AUA-VHR; P < 0.001). We noted differential outcomes in T1a RCC based on histology and grade for recurrence and CSM, while renal functional decline in addition to pathological factors and recurrence were predictive for ACM. Our findings support recently promulgated AUA follow-up guidelines for low-grade and variant histology pT1a RCC, but call for consolidation of follow-up protocols for high-grade pT1a and pT3a upstaged patients, with intensification of frequency of imaging follow-up in pT1a high-grade RCC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Stimulated Raman histology (SRH) offers efficient and accurate intraoperative neuropathological tissue analysis without procedural alteration to the diagnostic specimen. However, there are limited data demonstrating one-to-one tissue comparisons between SRH and traditional frozen sectioning. This study explores the non-inferiority of SRH as compared to frozen section on the same piece of tissue in neurosurgical patients. Methods: Tissue was collected over a 1-month period from 18 patients who underwent resection of central nervous system lesions. SRH and frozen section analyses were compared for diagnostic capabilities as well as assessed for quality and condition of tissue via a survey completed by pathologists. Results: SRH was sufficient for diagnosis in 78% of specimens as compared to 94% of specimens by frozen section of the same specimen. A Fisher's exact test determined there was no significant difference in diagnostic capability between the two groups. Additionally, both quality of SRH and condition of tissue after SRH were deemed to be non-inferior to frozen section. Conclusions: This study provides further evidence for the non-inferiority of SRH techniques. It is also the first study to demonstrate SRH accuracy using one-to-one tissue analysis in neuropathological specimens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• ImmunoPET is a potential biomarker for patient selection to immunotherapy. • Patient response classification differs with tumor measurement strategy. • MPM tumor volumetry predicts patient survival and outperforms CT volumetry. • CT image texture has potential to differentiate among MPM tumor histologies. • Skeletal muscle loss in chemotherapy patients demonstrates prognostic potential. Imaging of mesothelioma plays a role in all aspects of patient management, including disease detection, staging, evaluation of treatment options, response assessment, pre-surgical evaluation, and surveillance. Imaging in this disease impacts a wide range of disciplines throughout the healthcare enterprise. Researchers and clinician-scientists are developing state-of-the-art techniques to extract more of the information contained within these medical images and to utilize it for more sophisticated tasks; moreover, image-acquisition technology is advancing the inherent capabilities of these images. This paper summarizes the imaging-based topics presented orally at the 2021 International Conference of the International Mesothelioma Interest Group (iMig), which was held virtually from May 7–9, 2021. These topics include an update on the mesothelioma staging system, novel molecular targets to guide therapy in mesothelioma, special considerations and potential pitfalls in imaging mesothelioma in the immunotherapy setting, tumor measurement strategies and their correlation with patient survival, tumor volume measurement in MRI and CT, CT-based texture analysis for differentiation of histologic subtype, diffusion-weighted MRI for the assessment of biphasic mesothelioma, and the prognostic significance of skeletal muscle loss with chemotherapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hui Xie,* Gang Li,* Kangkang Liu, Zhun Wang, Zhiqun Shang, Zihao Liu, Zhilei Xiong, Changyi Quan, Yuanjie Niu Department of Urology, Tianjin Institute of Urology, The Second Hospital of Tianjin Medical University, Tianjin 300211, People’s Republic of China*These authors contributed equally to this workCorrespondence: Yuanjie NiuDepartment of Urology, Tianjin Institute of Urology, The Second Hospital of Tianjin Medical University, No. 23, Pingjiang Road, Hexi District, Tianjin 300211, People’s Republic of ChinaTel +86 1 520 221 6807Email niuyuanjie68@163.comPurpose: In recent years, there has been an increase in the incidence of small renal masses (SRMs) and nephrectomy was the standard management of this disease in the past. Currently, the use of active surveillance has been recommended as an alternative option in the case of some patients with SRMs due to its heterogenicity. However, limited studies focused on the regarding risk stratification. Therefore, in the current study, we developed a nomogram for the purpose of predicting the presence of high-grade SRMs on the basis of the patient information provided (clinical information, hematological indicators, and CT imaging data).Patients and methods: A total of 329 patients (consisting of development and validation cohort) who had undergone nephrectomy for SRMs between January 2013 and May 2016 retrospectively were recruited for the present study. All preoperative information, including clinical predictors, hematological indicators, and CT predictors, were obtained. Lasso regression model was used for data dimension reduction and feature selection. Multivariable logistic regression analysis was applied for the establishment of the predicting model. The performance of the nomogram was assessed with respect to its calibration and discrimination properties and externally validated.Results: The predictors used in the assessment of the nomogram included tumor size, CT tumor contour, CT necrosis, CT tumor exophytic properties, and CT collecting system oppression. Based on these parameters, the nomogram was evaluated to have an effective discrimination and calibration ability, and the C-index was found to be 0.883 after internal validation and 0.887 following external validation.Conclusion: Based on the aforementioned findings, it can be concluded that CT imaging–based preoperative nomogram is an effective predictor of SRMs and hence can be used in the preoperative evaluation of SRMs, due to its calibration and discrimination abilities.Keywords: renal cell carcinoma, small renal masses, SRMs, nomogram, tumor histology, CT

Context: Globally, colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the leading causes of cancer death. Many Asian countries experience an increasing incidence of CRC due to changes in diet and lifestyle. Many pathological prognostic factors other than the tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) staging reflect the biological behavior of tumor tissue and influence the treatment and survival. Aims: The aim is to evaluate: (1) Various morphological prognostic factors of colorectal cancer, (2) the correlation of the prognostic factors with survival, and (3) the prognostic factors with independent prognostic significance. Settings and Design: Descriptive study conducted in a tertiary care center in Kerala. Materials and Methods: Five hundred and eighty-seven resected specimens of CRC received from January 1, 2007 to October 31, 2012 were studied for various morphological prognostic factors. Overall survival and disease-free survival were obtained by Kaplan Meier survival analysis. Cox regression analysis was performed to identify the predictors of survival. Results: CRC incidence was higher in the age group 40–60 years and males were dominant. Rectum was the common site with bleeding per rectum as a common symptom. Predominant tumors had ulcerative gross configuration, size ≤5 cm and were free of transverse, radial margin involvement. Majority of tumors were well-differentiated adenocarcinoma with invasion beyond muscularis propria, without vascular, perineural invasion, and lymph node involvement and were in Stage II. The overall and disease-free 3-year survival rates were 89.1% and 88%, respectively. Among the eight significant factors in univariate analysis, tumor histology, depth of invasion, and perineural invasion were found to have independent prognostic significance in multivariate analysis. Conclusions: In addition to the TNM staging, other morphological prognostic factors should be given importance, while considering the patients for adjuvant therapy to improve the survival rates in CRC.

At present, mostly case‐control and retrospective studies have investigated the association between etiologic risk factors and the development of histologic subtypes of renal cell carcinoma (RCC). Therefore, we assessed the heterogeneity between body mass index (BMI), cigarette smoking, alcohol consumption and hypertension across clear‐cell RCC (ccRCC) and papillary RCC (pRCC) risk in the prospective Netherlands Cohort Study on diet and cancer. In 1986, 120 852 participants aged 55 to 69 completed a self‐administered questionnaire on diet and other risk factors for cancer. Participants were followed up for cancer through record linkage. Tumor histology was assessed through centralized revision by two experienced uropathologists. After 20.3 years of follow‐up, 384 histologically verified RCC cases, including 315 ccRCC and 46 pRCC cases and 4144 subcohort members were eligible for case‐cohort analysis. Hazard ratios and 95% confidence intervals were estimated by multivariable‐adjusted proportional hazards models. Overall, BMI was associated positively with ccRCC risk, but inversely with pRCC risk. Cigarette smoking was associated with an increased ccRCC, but a decreased pRCC risk. Alcohol consumption was inversely associated with both ccRCC and pRCC risk. Hypertension was associated with an increased risk of both ccRCC and pRCC. Statistically significant etiologic heterogeneity was observed for BMI, BMI change since age 20, and smoking duration in current smokers across ccRCC and pRCC risk. In conclusion, we observed potential heterogeneity for BMI, BMI change and smoking duration across ccRCC and pRCC risk. What's new? Etiologic risk factors for clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) and papillary renal cell carcinoma (pRCC) include alcohol consumption, body mass index (BMI), cigarette smoking, and hypertension. Little is known, however, about variability in how these factors affect the development of RCC histologic subtypes. In this population‐based prospective cohort study, examination of variability in associations between established etiologic factors and RCC histologic subtypes revealed significant heterogeneity between BMI and ccRCC and pRCC risk and between risk of these subtypes and smoking duration in current smokers. The findings provide novel insight into relationships between etiologic heterogeneity and mechanisms of RCC development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The development of multigene classifiers for cancer prognosis, treatment prediction, molecular subtypes or clinicopathological groups has been a cornerstone in transcriptomic analyses of human malignancies for nearly two decades. However, many reported classifiers are critically limited by different preprocessing needs like normalization and data centering. In response, a new breed of classifiers, single sample predictors (SSPs), has emerged. SSPs classify samples in an N-of-1 fashion, relying on, e.g. gene rules comparing expression values within a sample. To date, several methods have been reported, but there is a lack of head-to-head performance comparison for typical cancer classification problems, representing an unmet methodological need in cancer bioinformatics. To resolve this need, we performed an evaluation of two SSPs [k-top-scoring pair classifier (kTSP) and absolute intrinsic molecular subtyping (AIMS)] for two case examples of different magnitude of difficulty in non-small cell lung cancer: gene expression–based classification of (i) tumor histology and (ii) molecular subtype. Through the analysis of ~2000 lung cancer samples for each case example (n  = 1918 and n  = 2106, respectively), we compared the performance of the methods for different sample compositions, training data set sizes, gene expression platforms and gene rule selections. Three main conclusions are drawn from the comparisons: both methods are platform independent, they select largely overlapping gene rules associated with actual underlying tumor biology and, for large training data sets, they behave interchangeably performance-wise. While SSPs like AIMS and kTSP offer new possibilities to move gene expression signatures/predictors closer to a clinical context, they are still importantly limited by the difficultness of the classification problem at hand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: Purpose: Medullary carcinoma (MC) is a rare tumor with a solid growth pattern without glandular differentiation and constitutes less than 1% of colorectal cancers. Lymph node positivity and distant organ metastasis were reported to be lower than in other poorly differentiated adenocarcinomas. Therefore, the diagnosis of MC is pathologically important in terms of follow-up and treatment. We aimed to investigate the characteristics of medullary cancer in our case series. Methods: 427 patients with colorectal cancer (CRC) who underwent surgery between January 2011 and December 2017 were evaluated retrospectively in 2 groups as MC (n = 13) and non-MC (n = 414) in terms of demographic characteristics, pathological data, and oncological outcomes. Results: 76.9% (n = 10) of the MC group were female while 36% (n = 149) of the non-MC group were female (p = 0.003). The tumors were located in the right colon in 84.6% (n = 11) of the MC patients and in 26.6% (n = 110) of the non-MC patients (p < 0.001). The rate of laparoscopy was 83.8% for all CRC patients, and 53.8% for the MC group (p = 0.01). T4 cases (69.2%) and tumor volume (131 ± 87 cm3) in the MC group were significantly higher than in the non-MC group (p < 0.05). The rate of high microsatellite instability (MSI) was 85%. 5‑year overall survival was 75% for the patients with MC and 82% for non-MC (p = 0.13). Conclusion: MC is commonly localized in the right colon, has a large tumor size, and is mostly diagnosed in the T4 stage. As MC most likely have defects in DNA MMR, correct pathological diagnosis is important for postoperative treatment and the prognosis of the patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mohs micrographic surgery is a specialized subset of staged surgical excisions with each subsequent stage being driven largely by the histologic findings of the previous stage. Therefore, it is imperative that histologic analysis is performed in an accurate manner. Frozen section and tissue flattening is a crucial step in Mohs surgery. Frozen sections introduce certain artifacts and these artifacts must be interpreted in the correct context. Basal and squamous cell carcinomas are the most common tumors encountered in Mohs micrographic surgery, and their histopathology is also associated with certain “pitfalls”. Basal cell carcinoma should be distinguished from hair follicles, folliculocentric basaloid proliferations, poromas, nevus sebaceous, desmoplastic trichoepitheliomas, and spiradenomas, to name but a few histologic entities. Similarly, squamous cell carcinoma should be distinguished from hypertrophic actinic keratoses, pseudoepitheliomatous hyperplasia, sebaceous carcinoma, and microcystic adnexal carcinoma. In addition, there are numerous subtypes of basal cell and squamous carcinomas that the Mohs surgeon should be aware of due to differences in the biologic behavior of these tumors. This review presents a number of the common histologic pitfalls of Mohs micrographic surgery and a review of tumor histology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the enhanced permeation and retention (EPR) effect continues to be a controversial topic in nanomedicine, we sought to examine EPR as a function of nanoparticle size, tumor model, and tumor location, while also evaluating tumors for EPR mediating factors such as microvessel density, vascular permeability, lymphatics, stromal content, and tumor-associated immune cells. Tumor accumulation was evaluated for 55 × 60, 80 × 180, and 80 × 320 nm PRINT particles in four subcutaneous flank tumor models (SKOV3 human ovarian, 344SQ murine nonsmall cell lung, A549 human nonsmall cell lung, and A431 human epidermoid cancer). Each tumor model revealed specific particle accumulation trends with evident particle size dependence. Immuno-histochemistry staining revealed differences in tumor microvessel densities that correlated with overall tumor accumulation. Immunofluorescence images displayed size-mediated tumor penetration with signal from the larger particles concentrated close to the blood vessels, while signal from the smaller particle was observed throughout the tissue. Differences were also observed for the 55 × 60 nm particle tumor penetration across flank tumor models as a function of stromal content. The 55 × 60 nm particles were further evaluated in three orthotopic, metastatic tumor models (344SQ, A549, and SKOV3), revealing preferential accumulation in primary tumors and metastases over healthy tissue. Moreover, we observed higher tumor accumulation in the orthotopic lung cancer models than in the flank lung cancer models, whereas tumor accumulation was constant for both orthotopic and flank ovarian cancer models, further demonstrating the variability in the EPR effect as a function of tumor model and location. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: We analyzed oncological outcomes in patients who underwent percutaneous renal cryoablation (PRC) with documented renal cell carcinoma (RCC) by perioperative biopsy. Methods: Multicenter retrospective analysis of 153 patients [median follow-up 48 months] who underwent PRC from 09/2005 to 08/2014 was performed. We divided the cohort into patients who developed recurrence versus no recurrence. Kaplan-Meier analyses examined recurrence-free survival (RFS) according to grade and histology. Multivariable analysis (MVA) was performed to identify factors associated with tumor recurrence. Results: One hundred and fifty-three patients were analyzed [18 patients (11.8 %) with recurrence and 135 (88.2 %) patients without recurrence]. There were no differences between the groups with respect to demographics, RENAL score, and number of probes utilized. Recurrence group had larger tumor size (3.1 vs. 2.4 cm; p = 0.011), upper pole tumor location ( p = 0.016), and greater proportions of high-grade tumor (33 vs. 0.7 %; p < 0.001) and clear cell histology (77.8 vs. 45.9 %; p = 0.011). Four-year RFS was 100 versus 80 % for grade 1 versus grade 2/3 tumors ( p = 0.0002), and 97 versus 88 % for other RCC versus clear cell RCC ( p = 0.07). MVA demonstrated tumor size >3 cm (OR 2.46; p = 0.019), clear cell histology (OR 2.12; p = 0.027), and high tumor grade (OR 2.33, p < 0.001) as independent risk factors associated with tumor recurrence. Conclusions: Association of higher grade and clear cell histology with recurrence and progression suggests need for increased emphasis on preoperative risk stratification by biopsy, with grade 1 and non-clear cell RCC being associated with improved treatment success than higher grade and clear cell RCC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although historically thymoma and thymic carcinoma have been treated surgically, radiation therapy also has an important role, either as postoperative therapy to reduce the risk of mediastinal recurrence or as part of definitive treatment for patients who cannot undergo surgery. Induction chemotherapy and molecular targeted agents may also be appropriate for thymic carcinoma, the behavior of which resembles non-small cell lung carcinoma more than that of thymoma or invasive thymoma and is increasingly being treated like lung cancer. We present here a review of current therapies for thymic malignancies and briefly discuss the potential benefits from novel technologies for such treatment.

Imaging of malignant pleural mesothelioma is essential to patient management, prognostication, and response assessment. From animal models to clinical trials, the gamut of research activities and clinical standards relies on imaging to provide information on lesion morphology and the growing number of physiologic characteristics amenable to capture through imaging techniques. The complex morphology, growth pattern, and biological mechanisms of mesothelioma, however, present challenges for image acquisition and interpretation. Nevertheless, novel approaches to image acquisition and subsequent image analysis have expanded the opportunities for (as well as the need for) imaging in this disease. This paper summarizes the imaging-based research presented orally at the 2014 International Conference of the International Mesothelioma Interest Group (iMig) in Cape Town, South Africa, October 2014. Presented topics include the imaging of hypoxia in a murine model through positron emission tomography (PET), the use of diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to assess the histologic composition of biphasic mesothelioma and to assess early response to chemotherapy, the correlation of CT-based tumor volume with the volume of the post-surgical tumor specimen, the development of volumetric tumor response criteria, and pre-treatment tumor volume growth considerations for tumor response assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Feline mammary carcinoma is highly malignant and generally associated with a poor prognosis, although studies suggest the range of survival times in affected cats is broad. Histologic grading of these tumors is achieved using the Elston and Ellis system, originally developed for human breast cancer. In cats, however, classification using this method has variable prognostic value. Therefore, objectives of this study were (1) to evaluate the Elston and Ellis grading system for feline mammary carcinoma in a predominantly spayed population and (2) to determine whether modification of this system or development of a novel system improved the prognostic value of histologic grading. Survey data and histologic features for 108 carcinomas from 97 cats were analyzed with respect to overall survival. Elston and Ellis grading failed to correlate significantly with overall survival. Using multivariable analysis, lymphovascular invasion, nuclear form, and mitotic count each demonstrated independent prognostic significance (P = .008, <.001, and .004, respectively). Modifications of the Elston and Ellis system and a novel grading system were proposed based on these results; all showed significant correlation with overall survival (P < .001). Median survival times were 27, 29, or 31 months for grade I; 14, 12, or 14 months for grade II; and 13, 5, or 8 months for grade III carcinomas using the mitotic-modified Elston and Ellis, the revised Elston and Ellis, or the novel grading system, respectively. Based on this retrospective study, adoption of the species-specific systems as proposed here may improve the prognostic value of histologic grading for feline mammary carcinoma. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The introduction of microarray techniques to cancer research brought great expectations for finding biomarkers that would improve patients' treatment; however, the results of such studies are poorly reproducible and critical analyses of these methods are rare. In this study, we examined global gene expression in 97 ovarian cancer samples. Also, val-idation of results by quantitative RT-PCR was performed on 30 additional ovarian cancer samples. We carried out a number of systematic analyses in relation to several defined clinicopathological features. The main goal of our study was to delineate the molecular background of ovarian cancer chemoresistance and find biomarkers suitable for prediction of patients' prognosis.We found that histological tumor type was the major source of vari-ability in genes expression, except for serous and undifferentiated tumors that showed nearly identical profiles. Analysis of clinical endpoints [tumor response to chemotherapy, overall survival, disease-free survival (DFS)] brought results that were not confirmed by validation either on the same group or on the independent group of patients. CLASP1 was the only gene that was found to be important for DFS in the independent group, whereas in the preceding experiments it showed associations with other clinical endpoints and with BRCA1 gene mutation; thus, it may be worthy of further testing. Our results confirm that histological tumor type may be a strong confounding factor and we conclude that gene expression studies of ovarian carcinomas should be performed on histologically homo-geneous groups. Among the reasons of poor reproducibility of statistical results may be the fact that despite relatively large patients' group, in some analyses one has to com-pare small and unequal classes of samples. In addition, arbitrarily performed division of samples into classes compared may not always reflect their true biological diversity. And finally, we think that clinical endpoints of the tumor probably depend on subtle changes in many and, possibly, alternative molecular pathways, and such changes may be difficult to demonstrate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although historically thymoma and thymic carcinoma have been treated surgically, radiation therapy also has an important role, either as postoperative therapy to reduce the risk of mediastinal recurrence or as part of definitive treatment for patients who cannot undergo surgery. Induction chemotherapy and molecular targeted agents may also be appropriate for thymic carcinoma, the behavior of which resembles non-small-cell lung carcinoma more than that of thymoma or invasive thymoma and is increasingly being treated like lung cancer. We present here a review of current therapies for thymic malignancies and briefly discuss the potential benefits from novel technologies for such treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article emphasizes the basis for origin and importance of tumor patterns in diagnosis of oral and maxillofacial tumors. In this article, histological patterns and subpatterns of head and neck tumors are enlisted. Although, undifferentiated tumors remain a challenge to the histopathologist, by describing the histological patterns and the subpatterns of the tumors, an attempt has been made for the diagnosis of the tumors and subsequently for implementation of precise treatment plan for the same. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]