A high proliferation rate measured by cyclin A predicts a favourable chemotherapy response in soft tissue sarcoma patients

A small but not insignificant number of patients experience a prolonged survival after treatment of metastatic soft tissue sarcoma. This must be weighed against the majority of the patients who benefit little from the therapy, but nevertheless experience its side-effects. It would therefore be of utmost importance to be able to screen for those patients who respond to the treatment. Since proliferating cells are more sensitive to chemotherapy than non-proliferative cells, we measured the proliferation rate of the primary tumour of 55 soft tissue sarcoma patients with locally advanced or metastatic disease by determining the flow cytometric S phase fraction and immunohistochemical Ki-67 and cyclin A scores. S phase fraction or Ki-67 score did not predict chemotherapy response or progression-free survival. A high cyclin A score, however, correlated with a better chemotherapy response (P = 0.02) and longer progression-free survival time (P = 0.04). Our results suggest that a high cyclin A score predicts chemotherapy sensitivity. © 1999 Cancer Research Campaig

Molecular biology of breast cancer metastasis: Inflammatory breast cancer: clinical syndrome and molecular determinants

Inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) is an aggressive form of locally advanced breast cancer (LABC) that effects approximately 5% of women with breast cancer annually in the USA. It is a clinically and pathologically distinct form of LABC that is particularly fast growing, invasive, and angiogenic. Nearly all women have lymph node involvement at the time of diagnosis, and approximately 36% have gross distant metastases. Despite recent advances in multimodality treatments, the prognosis of patients with IBC is poor, with a median disease-free survival of less than 2.5 years. Recent work on the genetic determinants that underlie the IBC phenotype has led to the identification of genes that are involved in the development and progression of this disease. This work has been aided by the establishment of primary human cell lines and animal models. These advances suggest novel targets for future interventions in the diagnosis and treatment of IBC

Update on inflammatory breast cancer

Inflammatory breast cancer (IBC) is both the least frequent and the most severe form of epithelial breast cancer. The diagnosis is based on clinical inflammatory signs and is reinforced by pathological findings. Significant progress has been made in the management of IBC in the past 20 years. Yet survival among IBC patients is still only one-half that among patients with non-IBC. Identification of the molecular determinants of IBC would probably lead to more specific treatments and to improved survival. In the present article we review recent advances in the molecular pathogenesis of IBC. A more comprehensive view will probably be obtained by pan-genomic analysis of human IBC samples, and by functional in vitro and in vivo assays. These approaches may offer better patient outcome in the near future