Villoglandular papillary adenocarcinoma of the uterine cervix with lymph node metastasis - A case report and review of the literature

Villoglandular papillary adenocarcinoma was first described by Young and Scully in 1989 as a distinct entity with the histological features of exophytic growth proliferation, villous and papillary architecture and mild to moderate nuclear atypia. We report one case of villoglandular papillary adenocarcinoma (VGPA) of the uterine cervix with lymph node metastasis and reviewed the clinicopathological features of six other cases reported in the literature. Our patient is the seventh similar reported cases. They ranged in age from 29 to 54 (mean, 41) years. Five had lymphovascular invasion. All except our patient were treated with radical hysterectomy and radiotherapy. She was followed-up for 7 months and unfortunately died due to chest infectio

Performance Levels and Perspective of Graduate Learners’ on Fully Online Learning During Covid-19

Open University Malaysia (OUM) is a leading open and distance learning institution in Malaysia that offers its programs in blended mode. The blended mode of learning comprises self-managed learning, face-to-face tutorials, and online forum. Through its learning platform, named ‘myINSPIRE’, OUM has successfully offered some of its programmes fully online. The outbreak COVID-19 in early 2020 has pushed OUM to offer all its programmes fully online, including programmes for graduates. Measures were taken to improve teaching and learning support online. Part of the efforts included having weekly e-lessons and e-tutorials, as well as online exams. Learners have been exposed to new learning experiences where they faced many challenges. This study is conducted with the aim to investigate how these changes have affected learners’ performance and their perspective towards fully online learning. A total of 143 post graduate learners enrolled in OUM under the Cluster of Applied Sciences participated in this study. The readiness for change model used in the study is based on Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). The model applies perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use to measure user acceptance of technology. The findings indicate that overall, the graduate learners have an acceptable level of readiness for change and are able to adapt and continue learning online despite facing some issues and challenges. It was found that the performance of the learners pre- and post- lockdown seemed to be comparable. Nevertheless, there is a need to find ways to improve and better tailor the online learning environment for our adult learners so as to make their fully online learning experience more rewarding

Potential biomarkers through genome-wide expression analysis of breast cancer samples from Malaysian patients

Breast cancer is a serious health concern and still a leading cause of death among women in the world. To explore the complexity of this cancer, we performed microarray analysis on highly selective cancer and normal breast tissues. The aim of this study was to identify differentially expressed genes between both tissues and to elucidate further molecular pathways involved in breast cancer carcinogenesis. Genome-wide expression profiling was performed on fifteen cancer and five normal breast tissues using the Affymetrix GeneChip® Human Gene 1.0 ST array. Supervised hierarchical cluster analysis using filtering parameters of -1.5 to 1.5 fold-change and p-value with False Discovery Rate < 0.05 revealed 404 up-regulated and 463 down-regulated genes. Pathway analysis revealed the significant genes were involved in cell cycle regulation, DNA repair, Hedgehog pathway, histone phosphorylation, TRRAP/Tip60 chromatin remodelling and apoptosis regulation. Among the top 10 significantly overexpressed genes were CENPF, DTL and MK167 and these were related to cell cycle regulation. Among the top 10 significant down-regulated genes, HOXA5 and NRG1 were found to be associated with Wnt signalling pathway and ErbB signalling pathway respectively. Aberrations in these genes are likely to promote breast cancer carcinogenesis. Our current findings highlighted the importance of differentially expressed genes in breast cancer and their molecular pathways that linked these genes. Further studies are required to validate our findings using larger sample size

Ko-pengekspresan reseptor estrogen beta (ERβ) dan aktin otot licin pada tumor filodes di payudara: suatu kajian tisu mikroarai

Proliferasi tumor filodes tertumpu terutama pada bahagian stroma yang dianggap sebagai komponen neoplastik bagi tumor filodes. Reseptor Estrogen (ER) yang memainkan peranan dalam payudara neoplastik juga terlibat dalam perkembangan tumor filodes. ERβ adalah satu jenis klon ER yang dilaporkan hadir pada stroma tumor payudara manakala pengekspresan aktin otot licin (SMA) di stroma dapat membandingkan gred histologi tumor filodes. Kami membandingkan pengekspresan ERβ dengan SMA pada komponen stroma tumor filodes menggunakan teknik tisu mikroarai (TMA). TMA dibentuk ke atas 77 kes tumor filodes (46 benigna, 17 pinggiran dan 14 malignan) menggunakan jarum berdiameter 0.6 mm (Alphelys Plaisir, Perancis) dan pewarnaan imunohistokimia dijalankan menggunakan penanda molekul ERβ dan SMA. Tumor filodes kerap hadir pada wanita berusia lebih daripada 40 tahun dengan tumor filodes benigna menunjukkan median umur pesakit paling rendah (p=0.017). Ekspresi ERβ dalam komponen stroma meningkat dengan gred histologi tumor. Sementara SMA menunjukkan ekspresi pada 62.8, 41.2 dan 57.1%, masing-masing bagi tumor filodes benigna, pinggiran dan malignan. Kedua-dua ERβ (p=0.024) dan SMA lebih cenderung hadir pada wanita ≥40 tahun. Kajian menunjukkan hubungan signifikan antara ko-pengekspresan ERβ dan SMA (p=0.047) dan 65.5% daripadanya adalah wanita berumur lebih daripada 40 tahun. Ekspresi SMA yang tinggi pada stroma tumor filodes benigna mungkin menunjukkan potensi proliferasi tumor ini untuk menjadi malignan. Ekspresi tinggi ERβ dengan tumor filodes malignan dan hubungannya dengan SMA mencadangkan ko-pengekspresan kedua-dua penanda molekul ini mungkin berperanan dalam tumorigenesis stroma tumor filodes

Expression of p16 and pKi-67 in cervical preneoplasia and neoplasia

This study was conducted to investigate the expression of p16 and pKi-67 in normal, preneoplasia and neoplasia lesions of the uterine cervix. One hundred and thirty one cervical specimens, consisting of normal cervix (n = 43), cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) lesions (n = 40) [16 LSIL: CIN 1 and 24 HSIL: 9 CIN 2 and 15 CIN 3] and cervical squamous cell carcinomas (n = 48) [16 SCC I, 17 SCC II, 7 SCC III and 8 SCC IV] were examined immunohistochemically in paraffin sections. All samples of the normal cervix were negative for p16. Immunoreactivity of p16 was observed in 4/ 16 LSIL, 12/24 HSIL and 30/48 SCC. In all p16-positive samples, both nuclear and cytoplasmic staining were observed. High expression of p16 (> 50 % of cell stained) was found in HSIL and SCC. Ki-67 index was significantly (p < 0.05) higher in high-grade squamous intraepithelial lesions (HSIL: CIN 2 & 3) and SCC lesions when compared to normal cervices. The expression of p16 and Ki-67 proliferation profile ( 30 % stained cells) were significantly associated with the grade of lesions (χ2 = 6.832, p = 0.033 and χ2 = 10.952; p = 0.012 respectively). There was no significant relationship demonstrated between p16 positivity and Ki-67 proliferation profile (χ2 = 0.292; p = 0.589). Our results indicated that p16protein may be involved in the carcinogenesis of cervical cancer. However, overexpression of p16 seemed to have no effect on cell proliferation. The expression of p16 and pKi-67 may be useful in cases where it is difficult to make a diagnosis by histology

Scalable E-business social network using multiCrawler agent

Social networking is a big buzz phrase nowadays. It refers to the practice of interacting with others online via blogs, forums, social media sites and other outlets. The importance of social networking is to let others know that we are exists. Social network can show how people in our extended network are related to each other. In this paper, we are focusing on e-business network since e-business is sprouting on the Internet these days like wild mushrooms. Moreover, with the rapid growth of the e-business in the Web, searching the popular web page of e-business and its relationship with others web page becomes an interesting and important issue for the user especially for the firms. Currently, we realized which of the e-business having the highest popularity via the newspaper, magazines and Internet. However, the e-business having a lack of information - the quality of the connection. In order to collect the e-business web sites from the Internet, crawler agent is used. The crawler will obtain information in the links and keeps the information in the repository for later processing. Here, we proposed the MultiCrawler agent to develop a scalable e-business social network. The genetic algorithm is used to optimize the e-business web pages fetched by the crawler based on the user profiles. The result is the visualization of e-business social network mapping that related to the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) companies in Malaysia