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Background: Retinoblastoma is the most common intraocular malignancy occurring in children. It can metastasize to the regional lymph nodes, central nervous system and distant organs usually the bones and bone marrow and very rarely to the soft tissue. Here, we report a case of unilateral retinoblastoma in a 4-year-old girl accompanied by a large metastasis of the parotid and submandibular glands that developed about 6 months previously and gradually increased in size 5 months after enucleation of the left eye.Case Presentation: A 4-year-old girl with a history of unilateral retinoblastoma presented with a large, painful and worsening mass (about 20 × 23 cm) of the left side of the neck. Following surgery, the orbital tumour was completely resected, and the large tumour invasion range in the left side of the neck was not resected completely. Histopathological examination revealed retinoblastoma of the orbit and the parotid and submandibular glands. After chemotherapy and additional local radiotherapy on the parotid and submandibular glands, the tumour was inactive and stable.Conclusions: Delayed detection and inappropriate management contribute to poor outcomes. Fundus examinations, education regarding the early signs of RB, and optimization of the therapeutic strategy for RB may play important roles in ocular health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intraoperative radiotherapy differs from conventional, fractionated radiotherapy in several aspects that may influence its biological effect. The radiation quality influences the relative biologic effectiveness (RBE), and the role of the five R's of radiotherapy (reassortment, repair, reoxygenation, repopulation, radiosensitivity) is different. Furthermore, putative special biological effects and the small volume receiving a high single dose may be important. The present review focuses on RBE, repair, and repopulation, and gives an overview of the other factors that potentially contribute to the efficacy. The increased RBE should be taken into account for low-energy X-rays while evidence of RBE < 1 for high-energy electrons at higher doses is presented. Various evidence supports a hypothesis that saturation of the primary DNA double-strand break (DSB) repair mechanisms leads to increasing use of an error-prone backup repair system leading to genomic instability that may contribute to inactivate tumour cells at high single doses. Furthermore, the elimination of repopulation of residual tumour cells in the tumour bed implies that some patients are likely to have very few residual tumour cells which may be cured even by low doses to the tumour bed. The highly localised dose distribution of IORT has the potential to inactivate tumour cells while sparing normal tissue by minimising the volume exposed to high doses. Whether special effects of high single doses also contribute to the efficacy will require further experimental and clinical studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Primary hemangioendotheliomas (HEs) of the spleen are rare, low-grade borderline-malignant vascular tumors. To date, only a few splenic HE cases have been reported in adults. In infants, one 9-year-old male patient has previously been reported, and the patient succumbed to the disease shortly following surgery. Currently, the clinical treatment and prognosis of the disease remains challenging to define, due to the extremely low number of cases reported. The current report presents the case of a 9-year-old pediatric patient with splenic HE, who survived with no recurrence or complications following a partial splenectomy. Additionally, a literature review was conducted to analyze the treatment and prognosis of the disease. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background The mechanism for inactivation of positive regulatory domain containing I (PRDM1), a newly identified tumour suppressor gene in extranodal NK/T-cell lymphoma, nasal type (ENNK/ T-NT) has not been well defined. The aim of the present study was to investigate the expression of PRDM1 in EN-NK/T-NT and analyse its downregulation by miRNAs. Methods PRDM1 and miRNA expression were evaluated in EN-NK/T-NT samples by immunohistochemical analysis, qRT-PCR, and in situ hybridisation. Luciferase assays were performed to verify the direct binding of miR-223 to the 3'-untranslated region of PRDM1 mRNA. In addition, the effect of miR-223 on PRDM1 expression was assessed in NK/T lymphoma cell lines by transfecting a miR-223 mimic or inhibitor to increase or decrease the effective expression of miR-223. Overall survival and failure-free survival in EN-NK/T-NT patients were analysed using Kaplan-Meier single-factor analysis and the log-rank test. Results Investigation of the downregulation of PRDM1 in EN-NK/T-NT cases revealed that PRDM1- positive staining might be a favourable predictor of overall survival and failure-free survival in EN-NK/T-NT patients. However, the negative staining of PRDM1 usually presented transcripts, suggesting a possible post-transcriptional regulation. miR-223 and its putative target gene, PRDM1, exhibited opposite patterns of expression in EN-NK/T-NT tissues and cell lines. Moreover, PRDM1 was identified as a direct target gene of miR-223 by luciferase assays. The ectopic expression of miR-223 led to the downregulation of the PRDM1 protein in the NK/T-cell lymphoma cell line, whereas a decrease in miR-223 restored the level of PRDM1 protein. Conclusions Our findings reveal that the downregulation of the tumour suppressor PRDM1 in EN-NK/TNT samples is mediated by miR-223 and that PRDM1-positive staining might have prognostic value for evaluating the clinical outcome of EN-NK/T-NT patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Tumor cells are considered to have an aberrant cell state, and some evidence indicates different development states appearing in the tumorigenesis. Embryonic development and stem cell differentiation are ordered processes in which the sequence of events over time is highly conserved. The "cancer attractor" concept integrates normal developmental processes and tumorigenesis into a high-dimensional "cell state space", and provides a reasonable explanation of the relationship between these two biological processes from theoretical viewpoint. However, it is hard to describe such relationship by using existed experimental data; moreover, the measurement of different development states is also difficult. Results: Here, by applying a novel time-ordered linear model based on a co-bisector which represents the joint direction of a series of vectors, we described the trajectories of development process by a line and showed different developmental states of tumor cells from developmental timescale perspective in a cell state space. This model was used to transform time-course developmental expression profiles of human ESCs, normal mouse liver, ovary and lung tissue into "cell developmental state lines". Then these cell state lines were applied to observe the developmental states of different tumors and their corresponding normal samples. Mouse liver and ovarian tumors showed different similarity to early development stage. Similarly, human glioma cells and ovarian tumors became developmentally "younger". Conclusions: The time-ordered linear model captured linear projected development trajectories in a cell state space. Meanwhile it also reflected the change tendency of gene expression over time from the developmental timescale perspective, and our finding indicated different development states during tumorigenesis processes in different tissues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background and objective Precious studies proven that the overexpression of eukaryotic translation initiation factor 4E (eIF4E) in a variety of solid tumors has linked with malignant tumorigenesis, invasion and metastasis. The aim of this work is to explore the expression of eIF4E and its clinical significance in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) through immunohistochemical method. Methods Seventy NSCLC specimens were constructed into tissue microarray, simultaneously took 19 cases adjacent tissues and 20 cases normal lung tissue as control, all performed using immunohistochemistry (Envision). Results eIF4E expression in NSCLC was significantly higher than that in adjacent tissues and normal lung tissues, statistically significant difference between the groups. The eIF4E positive expression in lymph node metastasis group was significantly higher than that in no-lymph node metastasis. eIF4E protein positive expression of WD/MD cancer tissue was significantly lower than those in PD/ND cancer tissue. There were no significant differences of positive expression of eIF4E with the tumor diameter, age, smoking status, gender of NSCLC patients (P>0.05). Conclusion There were highly over expression rate of eIF4E, and closely correlated with lymphnode metastasis in NSCLC, which implies that the eIF4E expression may be related to tumorgenesis, invasion and metastasis of lung cancer. eIF4E may be a new marker for lung cancer and objective indicators assessing the development of lung cancer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

B7-H3, a member of the B7-family molecules, plays an important role in adaptive immune responses, and was shown to either promote or inhibit T-cell responses in various experimental systems. B7-H3 was expressed in some human cancers and correlated with poor outcome of cancer patients. However, its exact role in cancer is not known. In the present study, we studied the expression of B7-H3 in the pathologic specimens of 102 patients treated for colorectal carcinoma (CRC) by immunohistochemistry. Strong B7-H3 expression was found in cancer tissues from 54.3% CRC patients, while minimal expression was found in adjacent normal colorectal tissues. Higher B7-H3 expression in tumor positively correlated with a more advanced tumor grade. In addition, consistent with a role of B7-H3 in suppressing tumor immune surveillance, the expression of B7-H3 in cancer cells negatively correlated with the intensity of tumor infiltrating T lymphocytes in both tumor nest and tumor stroma. Furthermore, we found that the level of soluble B7-H3 in sera from CRC patients was higher than healthy donors. TNF-α, an important cancer-promoting inflammatory molecule, was subsequently found to significantly increase the release of soluble B7-H3 in colon cancer cell lines. Therefore, our data suggest that both soluble and membranous B7-H3 proteins are involved in colon cancer progression and evasion of cancer immune surveillance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Staphylococcus Aureus Filtrate Preparation (SAFP) is a preparation of low-virulence strain of Staphylococcus aureus. In our study, we aimed to determine the anti-tumor activity of SAFP in vivo and explore the potential mechanism. Our study evaluated the anti-tumor activity of SAFP in four cancer cell models in vivo and determined its up-regulatory effects on mice immune system in vivo. It showed that 7.2 ng/10 g SAFP could inhibit the progression of murine hepatoma H22 and sarcoma S180, and the tumor inhibition rates achieved 48.1 and 35.7%, respectively. In human non-small cell lung cancer A549 and hepatoma BEL7402 xenograft athymic mice models, T/C of 7.2 ng/10 g SAFP group reached 41.0% in A549 model and 21.0% in BEL7402 model. Meanwhile, SAFP also significantly increased the proliferation of cultured mice splenocytes to 162.1%, and 7.2 ng/kg SAFP significantly ( P < 0.001) raised the activity of NK cells, elevated the serum level of IL-2, TNF-α and IFN-γ in mice. SAFP exhibited high efficiency in inhibiting the growth of cancer cells in a dose-dependent manner, which possibly attributed to its regulatory effects of immune system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is characterized by significant genomic instability that could lead to clonal diversity. Intratumor clonal heterogeneity has been proposed as a major attribute underlying tumor evolution, progression, and resistance to chemotherapy and radiation. Understanding genetic heterogeneity could lead to treatments specific to resistant and metastatic tumor cells. To characterize the degree of intratumor genetic heterogeneity within a single tumor, we performed whole-genome sequencing on three separate regions of an human papillomavirus (HPV)-positive oropharyngeal squamous cell carcinoma and two separate regions from one corresponding cervical lymph node metastasis. This approach achieved coverage of approximately 97.9%of the genome across all samples. In total, 5701 somatic point mutations (SPMs) and 4347 small somatic insertions and deletions (indels) were detected in at least one sample. Ninety-two percent of SPMs and 77% of indels were validated in a second set of samples adjacent to the discovery set. All five tumor samples shared 41% of SPMs, 57%of the 1805 genes with SPMs, and 34 of 55 cancer genes. The distribution of SPMs allowed phylogenetic reconstruction of this tumor's evolutionary pathway and showed that the metastatic samples arose as a late event. The degree of intratumor heterogeneity showed that a single biopsy may not represent the entiremutational landscape of HNSCC tumors. This approachmay be used to further characterize intratumor heterogeneity in more patients, and their sample-to-sample variations could reveal the evolutionary process of cancer cells, facilitate our understanding of tumorigenesis, and enable the development of novel targeted therapies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]