Background: The innate immune system against malignancies is mainly orchestrated by natural killer cells, which carry out killing mechanisms by using their receptors, such as killer immunoglobulin-like receptors (KIRs). This study was designed to determine the diversity of KIR genes in non-melanoma skin cancers. Methods: A total of 160 subjects with skin cancer, including 60 cases of squamous cell carcinoma and 100 cases of basal cell carcinoma (BCC), and 270 healthy subjects formed the study groups. The sequence-specific polymerase chain reaction was carried out to detect the presence or absence of 16 KIR genes. Results: KIR3DL1 (p = 0.0381, OR = 4.78, 95% CI = 1.108 to 20.62) increased in BCC patients compared to healthy controls. Conclusion: We concluded that the higher frequency of KIR3DL1 in BCC patients compared with healthy controls may increase the probability of developing BCC in Iranians.
Natural killer cells (NK) are the first arm of the innate immune system in defense against tumor and infection. 16 distinct Killer-cell immunoglobulin-like receptors (KIRs) are involved in orchestrating NK cell function. The KIR family contains 14 genes and 2 pseudogenes. Six of these receptors are activating (aKIR) and the remaining receptors are inhibitory KIRs (iKIR), that interact with MHC-I molecules; producing signals which stop NK cell function. In the current study, we have investigated the genomic diversity of KIRs and determining the A and B haplotypes as well as Bx subsets in 119 patients with bladder cancer and 200 healthy controls to find out if there is an association between KIR system and susceptibility to bladder cancer. Polymerase chain reaction with sequence specific primers (SSP-PCR) typing system was used to determine the KIR gene profile. The results implicated decreased frequency of inhibitory KIR2DL2 and activating KIR2DS2 while increased frequency of CxT4 genotypes in patients compared with healthy controls. Among Bx subsets, the CxT4 gene cluster is more frequent in bladder cancer patients compared to controls. Our results provide a conclusion that KIR2S2 and KIR2L2 may play a protective role against bladder cancer development while the CxT4 gene cluster may underlie susceptibility to bladder cancer in Iranian population.
Introduction: Plasma cell leukemia (PCL) is a rare and clinically aggressive form of plasma cell dyscrasia. Despite the significant role of BRAF mutation in plasma cell neoplasms, this mutation has been rarely considered in these cases. Finding evidence guiding us toward assessing the BRAF mutation in patients with plasma cell neoplasms could help make the suitable decision for targeted therapy. Case Presentation: A 79-year-old man presented with leukocytosis. Peripheral blood smear exhibited marked lymphocytosis and infiltration of about 50% abnormal lymphoid cells with slender cell-surface projections and oval shape nucleus. These findings raised the provisional diagnosis of hairy cell leukemia (HCL) or HCL variants (HCL-v). Molecular analysis confirmed the presence of BRAFV600E mutation, which was in agreement with HCL diagnosis, albeit the flow cytometric assessment of abnormal lymphocytes corroborated PCL. Conclusions: Together with the previous comprehensive analysis regarding the association of cytoplasmic projections and BRAF mutations, our findings could suggest this morphological characteristic in plasma cells (PCs) as an indication for the assessment of BRAF V600E mutation in PC dyscrasias.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.