A 40-year-old, male, Japanese patient presented with the complaint of painless, right testicular swelling. Tumor markers for testicular cancer were normal. He underwent radical orchiectomy with the clinical diagnosis of stage I seminoma. Pathological examination revealed seminoma and coexisting neuroendocrine tumor (NET). Germ cell neoplasia in situ (GCNIS) was present in the vicinity of seminoma, but there was no continuity between NET and seminoma. Tumor cells of both lesions displayed amplification of 12p and isochromosome 12p on fluorescence in situ hybridization, suggesting that both tumors originated from GCNIS. The present report is the first to describe a case of primary testicular NET coexisting with seminoma in an ipsilateral testis.
BACKGROUND: The controlling nutritional status (CONUT) score is an objective indicator of general condition from the aspect of nutritional status, calculated from serum albumin, total cholesterol, and total lymphocyte count. The CONUT score is also considered to reflect the degree of tumor-derived chronic inflammation and the host immune status in patients with advanced cancer. OBJECTIVE: To examine the prognostic role of the CONUT score in patients with advanced urothelial carcinoma (aUC) treated with first-line platinum-based chemotherapy. METHODS: Associations of the CONUT score with clinical parameters and overall survival (OS) were investigated retrospectively in 147 patients with aUC receiving first-line platinum-based chemotherapy at a single cancer center from February 2003 to April 2019. RESULTS: The median (range) CONUT score was 1 (0– 7). A higher CONUT score was associated with lower hemoglobin (P < 0.001) and higher C-reactive protein levels (P = 0.023) but not with chemotherapy response (P = 0.432). The median OS for patients with CONUT scores 0– 1, 2– 3, and ≥4 were 23.3, 14.9, and 9.4 months, respectively (P < 0.001). In the multivariable analysis, a higher CONUT score was independently associated with shorter OS (scores 2– 3 vs 0– 1, HR 1.58, P = 0.048; scores ≥4 vs 0– 1, HR 2.63, P = 0.008) along with poorer performance status (HR 4.79, P < 0.001), primary tumor site of the upper urinary tract (HR 1.70, P = 0.016), higher LDH (HR 3.85, P = 0.036), higher alkaline phosphatase (HR 3.06, P = 0.028), and non-responders to chemotherapy (HR 2.07, P < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: The CONUT score is a prognostic biomarker in patients with aUC receiving first-line platinum-based chemotherapy.
platforms had limited utility in managing patients diagnosed with this disease because they lacked the appropriate sensitivity level. Also, they did not report on the PD-L1 receptor status, which is becoming an essential component of modern immunotherapy of BC METHODS: We used a novel device to enrich and retrieve CTCs from blood samples of patients with high grade and low-grade BC, as well as benign conditions, treated with cystectomy by using a microfluidic chip. The Celsee Genesis (Celsee Inc) captures CTCs with high sensitivity and allows the captured CTCs to be retrieved for molecular analysis. It uses the microfluidic chip, which has approximately 56,320 capture chambers. Based on differences in cell size and deformability, each chamber ensures that small blood cells escape while larger CTCs of varying sizes are trapped and isolated in the chambers. PD-L1 expression on the isolated tumor cells was then evaluated using 4-color single-cell technology (IncellDX Inc.) directly on the chip.RESULTS: Ten bladder cancer (5 extensive low grade (LG) and 5 invasive high grade (HG) disease) and two benign bladder pathology patients provided blood samples before their cystectomy. We found CTCs in 3 patients (two LG and one HG disease). CTCs were four times higher in the HG sample than in the LG samples. PD-L1 expression was high on CTCs isolated from the HG patient's blood sample and lower in the two LG blood samples. No CTCs were detected in patients with benign bladder pathology.CONCLUSIONS: Our results show the feasibility of using novel, high sensitivity CTC detection, and PD-L1 single cell measuring technology in patients with BC. We also show that this technology has a potentially high sensitivity level for detecting CTC in patients with bladder malignancies by detecting low levels of CTCs in lowgrade disease. More extensive studies are planned to validate our findings.
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