Detection of Micrometastatic Tumor Cells in pN0 Lymph Nodes of Patients With Completely Resected Nonsmall Cell Lung Cancer

Abstract

The detection of lymph nodal micrometastasis by cytokeratin and p53 protein immunohistochemical staining will be helpful to predict the recurrence and prognosis of patients with completely resected stage 1 NSCLC.

Low expression of polypeptide GalNAc N-acetylgalactosaminyl transferase-3 in lung adenocarcinoma: impact on poor prognosis and early recurrence

“…Previous studies (Gu et al 2002) showed that micrometastatic tumour cells (cytokeratin positive cells) were present in pathologic negative lymph nodes in 34.7% of stage I non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients after complete resectioning, and patients with micrometastatic tumour cells had a poor prognosis and a high rate of recurrent disease. To see whether GalNAc-T3 expression correlates with micrometastases, micrometastatic tumour cells were detected in a total of 1436 hilar and mediastinal pathologic negative lymph nodes from 65 patients with stage I lung adenocarcinoma, using the method previously described (Gu et al, 2002), Of 65 patients, 19 exhibited lymph nodal micrometastasis, and a low expression of GalNAc-T3 was found in 12 patients (63.2%) (P ¼ 0.003). Furthermore, this may be a partial explanation for the relationship between aberrant expression of GalNAc-T3 and early metastasis (unpublished data, with subjects different from those of this study).…”

LINE-1 and Alu Methylation Patterns in Lymph Node Metastases of Head and Neck Cancers

“…Failure to detect occult tumor cells may be due to inadequate tissue sampling or the inattention of pathologists to minuscule tumor-cell groups. These actions can cause inaccurate tumor staging and lead to improper therapeutic management (Gu, 2002;Coello, 2004;Imoto, 2006;Broglie, 2011;Rahbari, 2012). Many studies have developed methods for detecting occult tumor cells or DNA, including serial section staining, immunohistochemistry, PCR and RT-PCR-based methods (Tsavellas, 2001;Riethdorf, 2008;Wada, 2008;Shimizu, 2012); however, their conclusions have been less satisfactory.…”

Lung Cancer Screening with CT

“…The purpose of lung cancer screening is to detect malignancy when it is preclinical, prior to the development of overt symptoms, providing the opportunity for treatment intervention that will prevent or delay death. There is clear evidence that lung cancer is not the product of one single molecular construct: there is considerable variation in lung cancer growth rates, as has been amply demonstrated by several observed phenomena: by calculations of tumor doubling time using CT (30,31), by the propensity of a subset of pathologic stage IA lung cancers to recur following presumed curative surgery (32,33), and by the indolent growth characteristics of certain subtypes of adenocarcinoma (34,35). Effectively, some lung cancers are biologically indolent and grow slowly; some lung cancers are biologically aggressive and grow and metastasize rapidly.…”