Advances in tenascin-C biology

Tenascin-C is an extracellular matrix glycoprotein that is specifically and transiently expressed upon tissue injury. Upon tissue damage, tenascin-C plays a multitude of different roles that mediate both inflammatory and fibrotic processes to enable effective tissue repair. In the last decade, emerging evidence has demonstrated a vital role for tenascin-C in cardiac and arterial injury, tumor angiogenesis and metastasis, as well as in modulating stem cell behavior. Here we highlight the molecular mechanisms by which tenascin-C mediates these effects and discuss the implications of mis-regulated tenascin-C expression in driving disease pathology

The role of tenascin-C in tissue injury and tumorigenesis

The extracellular matrix molecule tenascin-C is highly expressed during embryonic development, tissue repair and in pathological situations such as chronic inflammation and cancer. Tenascin-C interacts with several other extracellular matrix molecules and cell-surface receptors, thus affecting tissue architecture, tissue resilience and cell responses. Tenascin-C modulates cell migration, proliferation and cellular signaling through induction of pro-inflammatory cytokines and oncogenic signaling molecules amongst other mechanisms. Given the causal role of inflammation in cancer progression, common mechanisms might be controlled by tenascin-C during both events. Drugs targeting the expression or function of tenascin-C or the tenascin-C protein itself are currently being developed and some drugs have already reached advanced clinical trials. This generates hope that increased knowledge about tenascin-C will further improve management of diseases with high tenascin-C expression such as chronic inflammation, heart failure, artheriosclerosis and cancer

Second primary tumors in mycosis fungoides patients: Experience at the Northern Israel Oncology Center (1979-2002)

PubMed ID: 17318967Purpose: Mycosis fungoides (MF) patients enjoy long-standing remissions following total skin electron irradiation (TSEI) but run the risk of developing secondary malignancies. Our purpose was to report our experience with the phenomenon of secondary malignancies in MF patients. Patients and methods: From 1979 to 2002, 84 patients with biopsy-proven MF were referred to our department for TSEI, using the modified Christie Hospital translational technique until 1992 and the Stanford technique after 1992. Median total dose was 32 Gy (range 16-44) Christie; 30 Gy (range 15-36) Stanford. Underdosed areas were boosted with a median total dose of 10-20 Gy. Results: During a median follow-up of 73 months (range 2-191) from the end of the TSEI, 12 (15%) patients developed 17 second primary tumors within the irradiated areas and 6 patients developed 7 second primary tumors, either simultaneously with the newly diagnosed MF or prior to introduction of radiation therapy. Conclusion: The long-term prognosis was related solely to the secondprimary. Due to excellent long-lasting response rates following TSEI coupled with long-term survival, and the prognosis mainly associated to the stage and histology of the second malignancy, physicians should be aware of the possibility of second primary tumors. © 2006 Zerbinis Medical Publications

Subjective grading of Barrett's neoplasia by pathologists. Correlation with objective histomorphometric variables

Even though pathologists are trained to recognize the same histological features for the diagnosis and grading of different histological images, not all pathologists are influenced to a similar level of intensity by the same morphological characteristics of the tissue when scoring Barrett's dysplasia/neoplasia. The variables which most pathologists have intuitively chosen to use for scoring of the severity of Barrett's changes are mainly those related to the general tissue architecture, such as nuclear crowding, orientation and stratification. Interestingly, nuclear size is not used by most pathologists but nuclear pleomorphism and symmetry does influence a significant number of pathologists. Maybe the most difficult variables for the human eye to recognize are variables of chromatin texture (such as margination or heterogeneity), the predictive importance of which has been demonstrated in a previously published work. Textural variables may therefore remain the subject of a computerized analysis. Nevertheless, the fact that a few pathologists do actually correlate with nuclear texture in scoring, argues in favor of making further attempts to train pathologists to also rely on texture, similar to cytologists, when scoring Barrett's dysplasia

Total skin electron irradiation in mycosis fungoides: Comparison between a modified Christie Hospital translational technique and the Stanford technique

Seventy-one patients with mycosis fungoides (MF) were treated by Total skin electron irradiation (TSEI) using either a modified Christie Hospital translational technique (44pts) or a six dual-field Stanford technique (27pts). There was no statistical difference in response rate, disease-free survival and overall survival between the two irradiation techniques. However, the Stanford technique was significantly less toxic than the modified Christie Hospital technique

Integrated unified mapping of the Vrancea macroseismic data for the CEI region.

The countries in Central and East Europe are periodically affected by strong earthquakes originating from Vrancea zone and significant seismic effects are recorded all over Romania, Moldova, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Serbia, Hungary, etc. Vrancea earthquakes are of practical and theoretical interest due to the social and economical influence on a vast territory. The main result of this study is the unique collection of intensity data for the Vrancea events of 1940, 1977, 1986, and 1990, which represents a real step forward that overcomes the inherent differences affecting the present-day maps, hampered by political boundaries. This is done adopting a unique modelling procedure and processing the available data in an integrated way. As a result, unified macroseismic maps of the relevant portion of the CEI region are produced using two new procedures, Modified Polynomial Filtering and Diffused Boundar