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Primary pulmonary paraganglioma is a rare disease. We report a case of a 37-year old female patient with space-occupying lesions in the right lower pulmonary lobe during a routine examination without any symptoms. The patient underwent video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) resection of the right middle lobe and dissection of hilar and mediastinal lymph nodes under general anesthesia. She recovered without recrudescence. Preoperative diagnosis is difficult. Accurate diagnosis requires pathological examination, and immunohistochemical test is particularly important. Complete resection is the first treatment option for solitary primary pulmonary paraganglioma; however, VATS is a better technique. Given the high local control rates and few complications of radiotherapy, it is considered as a standard treatment.

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Abstract. Egl-9 family hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF)3/prolyl hydroxylase 3 (EGLN3/PHD3) serves a role in the progression and prognosis of cancer. PHD3 is able to induce apoptosis in HepG2 cells. In the present study, the protein levels of PHD3 and HIF2α were analyzed by western blot analysis and immunohistochemistry in 84 paired hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) tissues and adjacent non-tumor liver tissues. The mRNA levels of PHD3 and HIF2α were analyzed by reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction. PHD3 was overexpressed in HCC tissues compared with adjacent liver tissues (mRNA expression: P<0.001; protein expression: P=0.003; immunohistochemistry positive rate: P=0.001). The high level of expression of PHD3 in HCC tissues was associated with good differentiation (mRNA expression: P=0.002; protein expression: P<0.001) and small tumor size (mRNA expression: P<0.001; protein expression: P=0.002). In addition, HIF2α expression was lower in HCC tissues compared with adjacent liver tissues (mRNA expression: P<0.001; protein expression: P=0.002; immunohistochemistry positive rate: P= 0.002). No statistically significant associations were identified between HIF2α expression and clinicopathological characteristics. Pearson's and Spearman's correlation coefficients revealed no correlation between HIF2α and PHD3 expression in HCC. In conclusion, PHD3 expression acts as a favorable prognostic marker for patients with HCC. There is no correlation between PHD3 and HIF2α expression in HCC.

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Prolyl hydroxylase domain 3 (PHD3) is a hypoxia inducible factor-α (HIFα) regulator; it degrades HIFα in the presence of oxygen. Recently, there have been an increasing number of studies about the role of PHD3 in proliferation and apoptosis of cancer cells. However, most of the evidence for the role of PHD3 is observational, and little is known of the molecular mechanism. In our current study, we constructed a recombinant eukaryotic expression vector containing the PHD3 gene and detected its biological activity in human hepatoma cell line (HepG2 cells). We successfully constructed a recombinant pcDNA 3.1(+)-PHD3 plasmid; the results showed that PHD3 overexpression could inhibit the proliferation of HepG2 cells and induce apoptosis by activating caspase-3 activity. Our study has provided preliminary materials and data for further investigation of the effect of PHD3 on HepG2 cells.

Hypoxia inducible factor (HIF) is a product of tumor cells that plays an important role in protecting tumor cells and adjusting to low oxygen tension through driving the progression and aggressiveness of tumors and changing the growth, angiogenesis, differentiation and metastasis of tumors. Prolyl hydroxylase 3 (PHD3) is a member of PHDs that are induced in hypoxia. Many studies have shown that PHD3 not only can hydroxylate HIF-1α, but also has various other biological functions. Thus PHD3 plays significant roles in suppressing the growth, angiogenesis, differentiation and metastasis of tumors and promoting apoptosis of tumors under hypoxic conditions. It may become a new tumor suppressor gene and also may become a new approach to investigate tumors.

Small cell carcinoma of the urinary bladder (SCBC) is a type of rare malignant tumor of the urinary tract. As it does not have specific symptoms and its epidemiological features are similar to transitional cell carcinoma of the bladder, it is often misdiagnosed. SCBC is highly aggressive, metastasizes very early and has a poor prognosis, and consequently, it has become a focus for urological surgeons and oncologists. An 82-year-old male visited the Department of Urinary Surgery, in the Affiliated Hospital of Guangdong Medical College (Zhanjiang, China), due to gross hematuria that had persisted for one week. Abdominal computed tomography showed a neoplasm of ~6×6×7 cm on the anterior wall of the bladder. The initial diagnosis was of uroepithelial cell carcinoma of the bladder and surgery was performed to remove the tumor. However, the subsequent pathological examination suggested that the tumor was an SCBC. Small cell carcinoma is a highly malignant disease, with a high mortality rate, and it rarely occurs in the bladder. Upon review of a large number of studies, SCBC was not found to present with specific symptoms, making the early diagnosis of the disease difficult, however, commonly occurring symptoms included dysuria, painless gross hematuria and urinary tract obstruction.