BCAT1 overexpression is associated with advanced tumour status, and implies adverse clinical outcomes of UCs, suggesting that its role in tumour progression could serve as a prognostic biomarker and a novel therapeutic target in UC.

Despite recent improvements in the diagnosis and treatment, the final outcomes in patients with nasopharyngeal carcinomas (NPC) still remain suboptimal. Through data mining from published transcriptomic database with further bioinformatic validation, fibronectin (FN1) was identified as a differentially upregulated gene in NPC tissues, which implicates the transition from epithelial to mesenchymal phenotype (EMT) and promotes metastasis. Given the roles of fibronectin in risk stratification and in the frontline therapeutics of common carcinomas, such as renal cell cancer, we explored fibronectin immunoexpression status and its associations with clinicopathological variables and survival in a well-defined cohort of NPC patients. Fibronectin immunohistochemistry was retrospectively performed and analyzed using H-score for 124 biopsy specimens from NPC patients who received standard treatment without distant metastasis at initial diagnosis. Those cases with H-score higher than the median value were regarded as fibronectin overexpression. The findings were correlated with clinicopathological variables, EBV latent membrane protein 1 (LMP1) expression, disease-specific survival (DSS), distant metastasis-free survival (DMFS), and local recurrence-free survival (LRFS). Fibronectin overexpression was significantly associated with American Joint Committee on Cancer (AJCC) stages III-IV (p = 0.019) and LMP1 expression (p = 0.004), and univariately predictive of adverse outcomes for DSS, DMFS, and LRFS (all p < 0.0001). In the multivariate comparison, fibronectin overexpression still remained prognostically independent to portend worse DSS (p < 0.01, hazard ratio = 5.958), DMFS (p < 0.01, hazard ratio = 5.728), and LRFS (p < 0.01, hazard ratio = 5.411) together with a vanced AJCC stages III-IV. Fibronectin is upregulated in a subset of NPCs, and its increased immunoexpression significantly correlated with advanced features, justifying the potentiality of fibronectin as a theragnostic biomaker of NPC.

Purpose:The majority deaths of cancer patients are related to metastasis, thus genes associated with cell motility interest us. SPOCK1 was elected by data mining and serial evaluation. In addition, SPOCK1 has been reported to be highly expressed in different human cancers and been related to adverse outcomes. Therefore, we validate its prognostic significance in urothelial carcinoma (UC).Materials and Methods:Real-time RT-PCR assay was used to detect SPOCK1 transcript level in 27 urinary tract urothelial carcinoma (UTUC) and 27 urinary bladder urothelial carcinoma (UBUC) samples. Immunohistochemistry evaluated by H-score determined SPOCK1 expressions in 340 UTUCs and 295 UBUCs. The transcript and protein expression were correlated with clinicopathological features. Further evaluations of the prognostic significance of SPOCK1 for disease-specific survival (DSS) and metastasis-free survival (MeFS) were analyzed.Results:The expressions of SPOCK1 in UC were higher than those in normal urothelium by immunohistochemistry. The statistical analysis of clinicopathologic characteristics and immunohistochemistry showed that the higher expression of SPOCK1 was correlated to pT status (P<0.001), lymph node metastasis (UTUC, P=0.006; UBUC, P=0.033), higher histological grade (UTUC, P<0.001; UBUC, P<0.001), vascular invasion (UTUC, P<0.001; UBUC, P<0.001), perineurial invasion (UTUC, P<0.001; UBUC, P=0.001) and frequent mitosis (UTUC, P<0.001; UBUC, P=0.001). The prognosis of SPOCK1 of UC showed high SPOCK1 expression had significantly worse DSS and MeFS.Conclusions:The investigation demonstrated that the higher expression of SPOCK1 correlates with a poor prognosis in UC.

Radiofrequency ablation (RFA) and endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD) can potentially be applied for early esophageal squamous cell neoplasia (ESCN); however, no study has directly compared these 2 modalities.We retrospectively enrolled the patients with flat-type “large” (length ≥3 cm extending ≥1/2 of the circumference of esophagus) early ESCNs treated endoscopically. The main outcome measurements were complete response at 12 months, and adverse events.Of a total of 65 patients, 18 were treated with RFA and 47 with ESD. The procedure time of RFA was significantly shorter than that of ESD (126.6 vs 34.8 min; P < 0.001). The complete resection rate of ESD and complete response rate after primary RFA were 89.3% and 77.8%, respectively. Based on the histological evaluation of the post-ESD specimens showed 14 of 47 (29.8%) had histological upstaging compared with the pre-ESD biopsies, and 4 of them had lymphovascular invasion requiring chemoradiation or surgery. After additional therapy for residual lesions, 46 (97.9%) patients in the ESD group and 17 (94.4%) patients in the RFA group achieved a complete response at 12 months. Four patients (8.5%) developed major procedure-related adverse events in the ESD group, but none in the RFA group. In patients with lesions occupying more than 3/4 of the circumference, a significantly higher risk of esophageal stenosis was noted in the ESD group compared with RFA group (83% vs 27%, P = 0.01), which required more sessions of dilatation to resolve the symptoms (median, 13 vs 3, P = 0.04). There were no procedure-related mortality or neoplastic progression in either group; however, 1 patient who received ESD and 1 who received RFA developed local recurrence during a median follow-up period of 32.4 (range, 13–68) and 18.0 (range, 13–41) months, respectively.RFA and ESD are equally effective in the short-term treatment of early flat large ESCNs; however, more adverse events occur with ESD, especially in lesions extending more than 3/4 of the circumference. RFA does not allow for pathology to evaluate the curability after ablation, and thus currently the use for invasive ESCNs should be conservative until longer follow-up studies are available.

Purpose: Urothelial carcinoma (UC) is a type of tumor, especially of the urinary bladder, that affects people worldwide. Clarification of its detailed tumor biology and discovery of potential targets for developing treatment strategies are imperative because of frequent recurrences and poor prognosis of advanced UCs. By data mining a published dataset of UC of bladder (UCB) transcriptome (GSE31684) from Gene Expression Omnibus, National Center of Biotechnology Information (GEO, NCBI), we identified that THBS2 was the most significantly upregulated gene among those related to structural molecule activity (GO:0005198). Therefore, we evaluated the clinical significance and prognostic impact of thrombospondin-2 (THBS2) protein, A.K.A. TSP2, which encoded by THBS2 gene.Materials and Methods: THBS2 immunostaining was performed in 340 UCs of upper urinary tract (UC-UUTs) and 295 UCBs; subsequently, both groups were dichotomized into high- and low-expression subgroups. Moreover, statistical analyses were performed to correlate the association between THBS2 expression and clinicopathological parameters with two survival indexes: disease-specific survival (DSS) and metastasis-free survival (MeFS).Results: High THBS2 immunoexpression was significantly associated with advanced primary tumor status, nodal metastasis, and vascular invasion in both UC-UUT and UCB groups (all P ≤ .001). In addition, THBS2 overexpression was linked to adverse DSS and MeFS in univariate analyses and served as an independent prognosticator indicating poor outcomes in both groups in multivariate analyses.Conclusion: THBS2 may play a crucial role in UC progression and may be a novel prognostic marker. Additional investigations to elucidate the molecular pathway are necessary for developing potential THBS2-targeted therapies for UCs.