Molecular characterization of a bladder pleomorphic rhabdomyosarcoma in an adult patient

Pleomorphic rhabdomyosarcoma (PRMS) is a rare but highly aggressive soft tissue tumor, accounting for 3% of soft tissue sarcomas. PRMS is the most frequent subtype of RMS in adulthood and it is mainly located in the large muscles of the extremities, particularly the lower limbs and the trunk, more rarely in other locations especially in the bladder. At our knowledge, only six cases of adult pleomorphic rhabdomyosarcoma of the bladder have been reported in the literature. In this study, we report a case of PRMS of bladder with a very poor prognosis. In fact, the patient died a month after surgery. The tumor was characterized by poorly differentiated, medium-sized sometimes rhabdoid cells, mixed with large-sized and pleomorphic elements with evident anisonucleosis, and with large areas of necrosis. We used an extensive immunohistochemical panel to exclude other tumors much more frequently reported at this site. The positivity for myogenic markers such as actin, desmin, myogenin and MyoD1 allowed the correct diagnosis. Furthermore, since preliminary studies highlighted a series of specific molecular alterations in PMRS cell lines, we analyzed a panel of specific mutations and gene rearrangements by RT-PCR and FISH methods. We showed a copy gains of CCND1 and MALT genes in our samples, suggesting an accurate molecular characterization of PRMS to establish a better management of patients and new therapeutic opportunities

Patterns of tumor response in canine and feline cancer patients treated with electrochemotherapy: preclinical data for the standardization of this treatment in pets and humans

Electrochemotherapy (ECT) is a novel anticancer therapy that is currently being evaluated in human and pet cancer patients. ECT associates the administration of an anti-tumor agent to the delivery of trains of appropriate waveforms. The increased uptake of chemotherapy leads to apoptotic death of the neoplasm thus resulting in prolonged local control and extended survival. In this paper we describe the histological features of a broad array of spontaneous tumors of companion animals receiving pulse-mediated chemotherapy. Multivariate statistical analysis of the percentage of necrosis and apoptosis in the tumors before and after ECT treatment, shows that only a high percentage of necrosis and apoptosis after the ECT treatment were significantly correlated with longer survivals of the patients (p < 0.0001 and p = 0.004, respectively). Further studies on this topic are warranted in companion animals with spontaneous tumors to identify new molecular targets for electrochemotherapy and to the develop new therapeutical protocols to be translated to humans

Increased myocardial apoptosis in patients with unfavorable left ventricular remodeling and early symptomatic post-infarction heart failure

AbstractObjectivesThe purpose of this study was to evaluate a potential correlation between apoptotic rate (AR), post-infarction left ventricular (LV) remodeling, and clinical characteristics in subjects who died late (≥10 days) after an acute myocardial infarction (AMI) with evidence of persistent occlusion of the infarct-related artery at autopsy.BackgroundApoptosis contributes to myocardiocyte loss in cardiac disease and may have a pathophysiologic role in post-infarction LV remodeling.MethodsThe AR was calculated at the site of infarction and in remote unaffected LV regions, using co-localization of in situ end labeling for deoxyribonucleic acid fragmentation and immunohistochemistry for caspase-3, in 14 subjects who died within two months after AMI. Correlation between AR and clinical characteristics such as age, site of AMI, transmural extension, multivessel coronary disease, and signs and/or symptoms of heart failure (HF), at the time of initial hospitalization for AMI or subsequently before death, was assessed using non-parametric statistical tests. Parameters of LV remodeling including diameters, free wall thickness, diameter-to-wall-thickness ratio, and mass were measured at gross examination at autopsy. Values are expressed as median (interquartile range).ResultsAmong clinical variables, early symptomatic post-infarction HF (9 cases, 64%) was associated with nearly fourfold increased AR at the site of infarction (26.2% [24.5% to 28.8%] vs. 6.4% [1.9% to 13.3%], p = 0.001). Moreover, AR both at the site of infarction and in unaffected regions was significantly correlated with parameters of progressive LV remodeling (p < 0.05).ConclusionsOur data show that in patients dying ≥10 days after AMI, myocardial apoptosis is strongly associated with and may be a major determinant of unfavorable LV remodeling and early symptomatic post-infarction HF

BRACS: A Dataset for BReAst Carcinoma Subtyping in H&E Histology Images

Breast cancer is the most commonly diagnosed cancer and registers the highest number of deaths for women. Advances in diagnostic activities combined with large-scale screening policies have significantly lowered the mortality rates for breast cancer patients. However, the manual inspection of tissue slides by pathologists is cumbersome, time-consuming and is subject to significant inter- and intra-observer variability. Recently, the advent of whole-slide scanning systems has empowered the rapid digitization of pathology slides and enabled the development of Artificial Intelligence (AI)-assisted digital workflows. However, AI techniques, especially Deep Learning, require a large amount of high-quality annotated data to learn from. Constructing such task-specific datasets poses several challenges, such as data-acquisition level constraints, time-consuming and expensive annotations and anonymization of patient information. In this paper, we introduce the BReAst Carcinoma Subtyping (BRACS) dataset, a large cohort of annotated Hematoxylin and Eosin (H&E)-stained images to advance AI development in the automatic characterization of breast lesions. BRACS contains 547 Whole-Slide Images (WSIs) and 4539 Regions Of Interest (ROIs) extracted from the WSIs. Each WSI and respective ROIs are annotated by the consensus of three board-certified pathologists into different lesion categories. Specifically, BRACS includes three lesion types, i.e., benign, malignant and atypical, which are further subtyped into seven categories. It is, to the best of our knowledge, the largest annotated dataset for breast cancer subtyping both at WSI and ROI levels. Furthermore, by including the understudied atypical lesions, BRACS offers a unique opportunity for leveraging AI to better understand their characteristics. We encourage AI practitioners to develop and evaluate novel algorithms on the BRACS dataset to further breast cancer diagnosis and patient care.ISSN:1758-046

Patterns of tumor response in canine and feline cancer patients treated with electrochemotherapy: preclinical data for the standardization of this treatment in pets and humans-1

<p><b>Copyright information:</b></p><p>Taken from "Patterns of tumor response in canine and feline cancer patients treated with electrochemotherapy: preclinical data for the standardization of this treatment in pets and humans"</p><p>http://www.translational-medicine.com/content/5/1/48</p><p>Journal of Translational Medicine 2007;5():48-48.</p><p>Published online 2 Oct 2007</p><p>PMCID:PMC2082020.</p><p></p

Patterns of tumor response in canine and feline cancer patients treated with electrochemotherapy: preclinical data for the standardization of this treatment in pets and humans-0

<p><b>Copyright information:</b></p><p>Taken from "Patterns of tumor response in canine and feline cancer patients treated with electrochemotherapy: preclinical data for the standardization of this treatment in pets and humans"</p><p>http://www.translational-medicine.com/content/5/1/48</p><p>Journal of Translational Medicine 2007;5():48-48.</p><p>Published online 2 Oct 2007</p><p>PMCID:PMC2082020.</p><p></p