Tracheobronchial rupture is a rare but potentially life-threatening complication commonly caused by neck and chest trauma. Iatrogenic tracheobronchial rupture can be caused by intubation, tracheostomy, bronchoscopy but also linked to pre-existing primary diseases. Paratracheal air cysts, infrequently described in literature, seem to be associated with obstructive lung disease and weaknesses in right posterior lateral wall of the trachea. We report a case of a paratracheal air cyst rupture in a previous healthy patient.

Neuroblastoma is the most common, non-central nervous system tumor of childhood. It has the potential to synthesize catecholamines. However, the presences of hypertension are uncommon. We report the perioperative management of a 15-month-old infant with giant abdominal neuroblastoma who presented severe hypertension. The pathophysiological alterations of neuroblastoma are reviewed and perioperative management presented.

Computer-aided diagnosis (CAD) is a promising tool for accurate and consistent diagnosis and prognosis. Cell detection and segmentation are essential steps for CAD. These tasks are challenging due to variations in cell shapes, touching cells, and cluttered background. In this paper, we present a cell detection and segmentation algorithm using the sparse reconstruction with trivial templates and a stacked denoising autoencoder (sDAE). The sparse reconstruction handles the shape variations by representing a testing patch as a linear combination of shapes in the learned dictionary. Trivial templates are used to model the touching parts. The sDAE, trained with the original data and their structured labels, is used for cell segmentation. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to apply sparse reconstruction and sDAE with structured labels for cell detection and segmentation. The proposed method is extensively tested on two data sets containing more than 3000 cells obtained from brain tumor and lung cancer images. Our algorithm achieves the best performance compared with other state of the arts.

Phospholipase C beta 1 (PLCβ1) expresses in gliomas and cultured glial cells, but its expression is barely detectable in normal glial cells. We analyzed data from Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO-GDSxxx), The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), and the Repository for Molecular Brain Neoplasia Data (REMBRANDT) to explore the potential role of PLCβ1 as a biomarker in high-grade glioma (HGG). PLCβ1 expression is significantly higher in grade III gliomas than that in grade IV gliomas from GDS1815 (n = 24 vs. 76), GDS1962 (n = 19 vs. 81), and GDS1975 (n = 26 vs. 59). In GDS1815, PLCβ1 expression correlates with several known proneural (PN) signature genes; its expression from PN subtype (n = 15) is significantly higher than that from mesenchymal (Mes) subtype (n = 33) HGG. In GDS1962, PLCβ1 expression is the highest in nontumor brain tissue (n = 23) and is significantly higher than its expression in grade II gliomas [astrocytomas (n = 7) and oligodendrogliomas (n = 37)]. A Kaplan-Meier survival curve from a REMBRANDT cohort demonstrates that glioma patients with intermediate PLCβ1 expression (n = 103) survived significantly longer than PLCβ1 downregulated (2X) groups (n = 226). From TCGA data, PLCβ1 RNA-Seq signal inversely correlates with the pathological grades, and PLCβ1 expression in PN (n = 8) is of significantly higher levels than that in Mes (n = 8) subtypes of glioblastoma. The top 50 % of PLCβ1 expression subgroup (n = 294) of gliomas (grades II to IV merged) survived significantly longer than the low 50 percentile of the PLCβ1 expression subgroup (n = 293). p values are less than 0.05 for all these analyses. We conclude that PLCβ1 is a candidate signature gene for PN subtype HGG, and its expression inversely correlates with glioma pathological grade and is a potential prognostic factor.

Most studies analyzing prognostic factors for late relapse have been performed in postmenopausal women who received tamoxifen or aromatase inhibitors as adjuvant endocrine therapy for estrogen receptor (ER)-positive breast cancer.

Using nanoparticle delivery for anticancer therapy is a potential new drug modality. We developed a novel gelatinase-stimuli nanoparticle. In this study, we studied the antitumor and antimetastasis effect of pemetrexed-loaded targeted nanoparticles and evaluated the correlation between E-cadherin expression and lung metastasis in subcutaneous xenograft model. Compared with free pemetrexed, pemetrexed-loaded targeted nanoparticles exhibited the best antitumor and antimetastasis efficacy among the four therapeutic groups. The study also indicated that there was an inverse correlation between lung metastasis and E-cadherin expression. These results showed pemetrexed-loaded targeted nanoparticles may be a potent drug for tumor therapy and our preclinical data could provide new direction for clinical therapy of malignant melanoma.

Esophageal adenocarcinoma (EAC) is characterized by rapidly increasing incidence and mortality rates and poor survival. Efficacious preventive and treatment options are urgently needed. An increasing number of pharmacologic agents targeting cancer cell death via autophagy mechanisms are being evaluated in hopes of circumventing apoptotic and therapeutic resistance. We report for the first time, loss of Beclin-1, a key mediator of autophagy, was significantly linked to prognostic factors in EAC. Specifically, Beclin-1 expression loss occurred in 49.0% of EAC patients versus 4.8% of controls. There was a significant inverse correlation between loss of Beclin-1 with histologic grade and tumor stage supporting a tumor suppressive role for Beclin-1. Autophagy modulation linked to cell death was examined in EAC cell lines following treatment with a proanthocyanidin-rich cranberry extract, C-PAC, and the commonly used autophagy inducer, rapamycin. C-PAC induced Beclin-1-independent autophagy in EAC cells characterized by reduced phosphorylation at serine 15 and 93, and significant cell death induction. In contrast, rapamycin-induced autophagy resulted in concomitant, increases in total Beclin-1 levels as well as Beclin-1-phosphorylation in a cell line specific manner, leading to long-term cell survival. Furthermore, autophagic LC3-II was induced by C-PAC following siRNA suppression of Beclin-1 in EAC cells. Together these data support a prognostic role of Beclin-1 in EAC with evidence that Beclin-dependent autophagy induction is agent specific. Future studies are necessary to fully interrogate the role autophagy plays in the progression of normal tissue to EAC and how specific agents targeting autophagic mechanisms can be efficaciously applied for cancer prevention or treatment. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Long noncoding ribonucleic acids (RNAs) nowadays emerge as important biomarkers or potential therapeutic targets discussed in human cancers. Among them, maternally expressed gene 3 (MEG3) is known to be decreased in a variety of malignancies.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) were popularly investigated in many cancers. The aim of this study was to evaluate the expression, role, and mechanism of microRNA-618 (miR-618) in human thyroid cancer (TC) cells.

The deregulation of microRNA-185 (miR-185) has been showed to be associated with many cancers and act as a tumor suppressor in many types of human malignancies. We hence tried to find out its role in human colorectal cancer (CRC).

The aim of this retrospective study was to evaluate the programmed cell death 1 (PD-1) expression in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) and association with clinical characteristics.

Nuclear factor-kB (NF-kB) activity is crucial for survival and proliferation of many kinds of malignancies, including gastric cancer (GC). The receptor for activated protein kinase C 1 (RACK1) is known to regulate tumor development, whereas the underlined mechanism has not been described clearly.

MicroRNAs are important modulators of the cellular epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) process and are associated with metastasis in human nonsmall cell lung cancer (NSCLC). In this study, we tried to investigate the role of miR-338-3p in NSCLC cells.

The function of long noncoding RNA SPRY4-IT1 in human esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) has been showed in the former studies. The purpose of this study was to further analyze the underlined mechanisms responsible for its role in ESCC cells.

Serum carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) and the soluble fragment of cytokeratin 19 (CYFRA 21-1) are supposed to have a prognostic role in patients with nonsmall cell lung cancer (NSCLC) after surgery, but it has not been used as an adjunct to the tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) staging system to provide therapy options for patients with pathological Stage I NSCLC. This study was designed to investigate the effect of serum levels of CEA and CYFRA 21-1 before and after surgery on the prognosis of patients with Stage I NSCLC.

Glycosylation of proteins is an essential process in all eukaryotes. Mucin-type O-linked glycosylation is an evolutionarily conserved protein modification as a kind of glycosylation of proteins. The role of O-glycosylation was well documented in multiple cancers. While in breast cancer, the enzymes that catalyzed the initiation of O-glycosylation remained elusive. In this review, we briefly introduced the process of the initiation of O-glycosylation and summarized the roles of enzymes that catalyzed the initiation step of O-glycosylation in the breast cancer carcinogenesis, development, and progression. Finally, we summarized some attempts exploring the therapy against aberrant O-glycosylation.

Adrenal cystic lesions are uncommon but due to the improved radiologic imaging techniques their appearance seems to increase.

Bladder cancer (BC) has a typical aetiology characterized by a multistep carcinogenesis due to environmental exposures, genetic susceptibility, and their interaction. Several lines of evidence suggest that DNA repair plays a role in the development and progression of BC. In particular, the study of individual susceptibility to DNA double strand breaks (DSBs) may provide valuable information on BC risk, and help to identify those patients at high-risk of either recurrence or progression of the disease, possibly personalizing both surveillance and treatment. Among the different DSB markers, the most well characterized is phosphorylation of the histone H2AX (γ-H2AX). We assessed any potential role of γ-H2AX as a molecular biomarker in a case-control study (146 cases and 146 controls) to identify individuals with increased BC risk and at high-risk of disease recurrence or progression. We investigated γ-H2AX levels in peripheral blood mononuclear cells before and after their exposure to ionizing radiation (IR). We did not find any significant difference among cases and controls. However, we observed a significant association between γ-H2AX basal levels and risk of disease recurrence or progression. In particular, both BC patients as a whole and the subgroup of non-muscle invasive BC (NMIBC) with high basal H2AX phosphorylation levels had a decreased risk of recurrence or progression (for all BC HR 0.70, 95%CI 0.52-0.94, P = 0.02; for NMIBC HR 0.68, 95%CI 0.50-0.92, P = 0.01), suggesting a protective effect of basal DSB signaling. Our data suggest that γ-H2AX can be considered as a potential molecular biomarker to identify patients with a higher risk of BC recurrence. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Nodal mediastinal staging is a crucial part of the diagnostic workup of patients with non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) for planning optimal treatment. Transesophageal endoscopic ultrasound-guided fine needle aspiration (EUS-FNA) and real-time endobronchial ultrasounds transbronchial needle aspiration (EBUS-TBNA) are accurate, minimally invasive and safe diagnostic techniques for mediastinal staging. Because of the different accessibility to the mediastinum, they are considered complementary and their combination increases the diagnostic yield as compared with the either alone. Recent studies have shown that endosonography represents the best initial test for invasive mediastinal evaluation in NSCLC. Endoscopic ultrasound (with bronchoscope)-guided fine needle aspiration (EUS-B-FNA) is a recently introduced procedure consisting of a transesophageal needle aspiration using an ultrasound bronchoscope. It allows to perform both transbronchial and transesophageal needle sampling with the same instrument, in the same session and by one operator only, thus maximizing time and costs savings. In a recent study Oki et al. randomized 110 patients with hilar/mediastinal adenopathies or lung abnormalities adjoining both the esophagus and the bronchi, to undergo EBUS-TBNA or EUS-FNA performed by pulmonologists with an echobronchoscope. The Authors demonstrated that both procedures provide a high diagnostic yield, without any difference in the number of adverse events and a good comparable tolerance. Nevertheless, the transesophageal approach guaranteed a significantly lower dose of anesthetics and sedatives, a shorter procedural time, fewer oxygen desaturations, a significantly lower cough score and a higher operator satisfaction. In this review our aim was to discuss the findings by Oki et al. in the context of medical literature, highlighting the importance of the EUS-B needle aspiration technique in diagnosing mediastinal and lung lesions, when EBUS-TBNA is deemed less suitable. Finally, we pointed out the importance of interventional pulmonologists being trained to perform mediastinal sampling by the esophageal route, to choose the best solution in every technical and clinical occurence.