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Background: The range of lymph adenectomy in differentiated thyroid cancer remains still a mailer of controversy because of the lack of reliable diagnostic methods for nodal metastases, other than histopathology. Aim: To compare the results of detection of lymph node metastases of papillary thyroid cancer by conventional histopathology and immunohistochemistry with the results of reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction for thyroglobulin mRNA. Patients and methods: Each of 166 cervical lymph nodes obtained from 21 patients was divided into two halves: one was used for conventional histopathology and immunohistochemistry, the other part was investigated by molecular examination. Results: We obtained different results from examination of the lymph nodes in six (28.6%) patients. In four patients (19.1%) reverse transcription- polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) was more sensitive in detection of positive lymph nodes; in two patients (9.5%) it revealed fewer meta stashed lymph nodes than did histopathology. The rest of the patients did not have any differences: 12 (57.1%) of them had negative lymph nodes and three (14.3%) had positive lymph nodes in all examinations. Conclusions: (1) Thyroglobulin (Tag) RT-PCR is an appropriate method of detection for thyroid cancer cells. (2) In combine -tigon with histopathology, it might help to qualify patients' nodal status better. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: It has recently been reported by several sources that original (i.e., present in vivo) glioma cell phenotypes or genotypes cannot be maintained in vitro. For example, glioblastoma cell lines presenting EGFR amplification cannot be established.Methods and Results: IDH1 sequencing and loss of heterozygosity analysis was performed for 15 surgery samples of astrocytoma and early and late passages of cells derived from those and for 11 archival samples. We were not able to culture tumour cells presenting IDH1 mutations originating from currently proceeded 10 tumours; the same results were observed in 7 samples of archival material.Conclusion: The IDH1 mutation is expected to be almost mutually exclusive with EGFR amplification, so glioma cells with IDH1 mutations seem to represent a new group of tumour cells, which cannot be readily analysed in vitro because of their elimination. The reasons for this intriguing phenomenon should be investigated since its understanding can help to define a new therapeutic approach based on simulating in vivo conditions, responsible for tumour cells elimination in vitro. Moreover, a new model for culturing glioma cells in vitro should be designed since the current one does not provide conditions corresponding to in vivo growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We screened 50 glioblastomas for P53 mutations. Five glioblastomas showed heterozygous mutations, while three were putatively heterozygous. Six of these eight glioblastomas showed elimination of wild-type P53 mRNA. These results strongly suggest that some sort of mechanism(s) favouring mutated over wild-type P53 mRNA exists in glioblastoma cells with heterozygous mutations of this gene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]