Fas (Apo-1/CD95) is a cell-surface receptor involved in cell death signaling. The key role of the Fas system in negative growth regulation has been studied mostly within the immune system, and somatic mutations of Fas gene in cancer patients have been described solely in lymphoid-lineage malignancies. However, many nonlymphoid tumor cells have been found to be resistant to Fas-mediated apoptosis, which suggests that Fas mutations, one of the possible mechanisms for Fas-resistance, may be involved in the pathogenesis of non-lymphoid malignancies as well. In this study, we have analysed the entire coding region and all splice sites of the Fas gene for the detection of the gene mutations in 65 human nonsmall cell lung cancers by polymerase chain reaction, single strand conformation polymorphism and DNA sequencing. Overall, ®ve tumors (7.7%) were found to have the Fas mutations, which were all missense mutations. Four of the ®ve mutations identi®ed were located in the cytoplasmic region (death domain) known to be involved in the transduction of an apoptotic signal and one mutation was located in the transmembrane domain. This is the ®rst report on the Fas gene mutations in non-lymphoid malignancies, and the data presented here suggests that alterations of the Fas gene might lead to the loss of its apoptotic function and contribute to the pathogenesis of some human lung cancers.

Background The Breslow depth is an important parameter to determine the excision margin and prognosis of melanoma. However, it is difficult to accurately determine the actual Breslow depth before surgery using the existing ocular micrometer and biopsy technique. Objectives To evaluate the use of 3D wide‐field multispectral photoacoustic imaging to non‐invasively measure depth and outline the boundary of melanomas for optimal surgical margin selection. Methods Six melanoma patients were examined in vivo using the 3D multispectral photoacoustic imaging system. For five cases of melanomas (one in situ, three nodular, and one acral lentiginous type melanoma), the spectrally unmixed photoacoustic depths were calculated and compared against histopathological depths. Results Spectrally unmixed photoacoustic depths and histopathological depths match well within a mean absolute error of 0.36 mm. In particular, the measured minimum and maximum depths in the in situ and nodular type of melanoma were 0.6 and 9.1 mm, respectively. In the 3D photoacoustic image of one metastatic melanoma, feeding vessels were visualized in the melanoma, suggesting the neovascularization around the tumour. Conclusions The 3D multispectral photoacoustic imaging not only provides well‐measured depth and sizes of various types of melanomas, it also visualizes the metastatic type of melanoma. Obtaining accurate depth and boundary information of melanoma before surgery would play a useful role in the complete excision of melanoma during surgery.

Transforming acidic coiled-coil containing protein 3 (TACC3) is known to be involved in the control of normal cell growth and differentiation and in mechanisms of unregulated growth leading to tumorigenesis. The aim of the present paper was to determine the rate of TACC3 expression in a non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) collection and to clarify its correlation with clinicopathological parameters. A total of 163 NSCLC were analyzed immunohistochemically using a polyclonal TACC3 antibody and monoclonal p53 and Ki-67 antibodies on NSCLC tissue microarrays. A high level of TACC3 expression was observed in 14.8% of cases, preferentially squamous cell carcinomas. Patients whose tumors had a high TACC3 expression had a significantly shorter median survival time. In the Cox regression-based multivariate analysis, TACC3 expression proved to be an independent prognostic parameter (P = 0.031). TACC3 expression was correlated with p53 expression, and patient whose tumors highly expressed TACC3 and p53 had a significantly poorer prognosis than patients whose tumors had low-level expression for both immunostainings (P = 0.006). It is suggested that increase in TACC3 may impart a proliferative advantage to NSCLC and contribute to tumor progression, and that TACC3 expression is a strong prognostic indicator of clinical outcome in NSCLC.

The MR characteristics of successfully ablated breast cancers included central dark signal intensities with thin rim enhancement on subtraction images. Nodular or irregular thick enhancements should raise concern of partial ablation. We propose MRI plays a critical role in assessing the effectiveness of HIFU treatment.