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Background: Even though virtually all patients with Ewing sarcoma achieve a radiographic complete response, up to 30% of patients who present with localized disease and up to 90% of those who present with metastases experience a metastatic disease recurrence, highlighting the inability to identify patients with residual disease at the end of therapy. Up to 95% of Ewing sarcomas carry a driving EWS-ETS translocation that has an intronic breakpoint that is specific to each tumor, and the authors developed a system to quantitatively detect the specific breakpoint DNA fragment in patient plasma.Methods: The authors used a long-range multiplex polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique to identify tumor-specific EWS-ETS breakpoints in Ewing sarcoma cell lines, patient-derived xenografts, and patient tumors, and this sequence was used to design tumor-specific primer sets to detect plasma tumor DNA (ptDNA) by droplet digital PCR in xenograft-bearing mice and patients.Results: Tumor-specific breakpoint DNA fragments were detected in the plasma of xenograft-bearing mice, and the signal correlated with tumor burden during primary tumor growth, after surgical resection, and at the time of metastatic disease recurrence. Furthermore, the authors were able to detect the specific breakpoint in plasma DNA obtained from 3 patients with Ewing sarcoma and in 2 patients the authors were able to detect ptDNA when there was radiographically undetectable disease present.Conclusions: The use of droplet digital PCR to detect tumor-specific EWS-ETS fusion gene breakpoint ptDNA fragments can be developed into a highly personalized biomarker of disease recurrence that can be optimized in animal studies for ultimate use in patients. Cancer 2016;122:3015-3023. © 2016 American Cancer Society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses research on the safety and feasibility of the addition of pamidronate to chemotherapy for the treatment of osteosarcoma. Cisplatin, doxorubicin, and methotrexate with the addition of 2 milligrams/kilograms/dose of pamidronate was administered monthly to 40 patients with osteosarcoma for 12 doses. Results showed that pamidronate does not impair the efficacy of chemotherapy during the osteosarcoma treatment and may also improve the durability of limb reconstruction.

The article presents information on a study which determined whether repeat resection or amputation improves surgical treatment for patients with soft tissue sarcoma (STS) of the hand. Data reviewed were from patients with STS of the hand who were treated between 1996 and 2005. The assessment of recurrence-free survival (RFS) and functional outcome of hand-preserving procedures was performed based on the Musculoskeletal Tumor Society (MSTS) system. It discusses the findings of the study.