Molecular aspects of thymic carcinoma

PI3K as a Potential Therapeutic Target in Thymic Epithelial Tumors

“…4 Thymomas B2 ad B3 have an intermediate behavior and thymic carcinomas are aggressive tumors: they exhibit cytological atypia and high histological heterogeneity, lack typical structure of the thymus, and have higher metastatic potential, with 5-year survival rates at approximately 50%. 5,6 Surgical resection is the main therapeutic intervention for TETs at early stages, while advanced and recurrent disease are treated with chemotherapy. 78–13 …”

Expression of cell cycle and apoptosis regulators in thymus and thymic epithelial tumors

“…[18][19][20][21][22]. On the other hand, thymic dysfunction may cause various disorders in humans such as tumors, immunodeficiencies and autoimmune diseases [19,[23][24][25][26][27][28][29]. Normal thymic microenvironments can be anatomically compartmentalized into cortical and medullary regions, each of which is responsible for key stages in the development of thymocytes [18,19,21].…”

“…The multiple cellular events occurring in the differentiation of normal thymic cells and in the pathogenesis of thymic epithelial tumors (TET) involve proteins regulating cell cycle and apoptosis [12,25,28]. Immunohistology is a very useful routine technique for the analysis of the cell cycle and apoptosis in normal and pathological thymic tissues since it identifies the protein expression profile of distinct cell types, thereby permitting to obtain information about specific roles for these cells [20,[27][28][29].…”

“…In this regard, a number of studies reported the immunohistological expression patterns of major cell cycle and death regulators in normal thymus and TET . TET are the most common thymic tumor in adults, and they are divided into two broad categories: thymomas and thymic carcinomas [25,[27][28][29]. Thymomas are classified histologically according to WHO classification into A, AB, B1, B2 and B3 subtypes on the basis of neoplastic TEC morphology, the degree of the lymphocytic component and the presence or absence of epithelial cell atypia [28,29].…”

“…Thymomas are classified histologically according to WHO classification into A, AB, B1, B2 and B3 subtypes on the basis of neoplastic TEC morphology, the degree of the lymphocytic component and the presence or absence of epithelial cell atypia [28,29]. Thymic carcinomas are very rare and are characterized by their histological variability, often resembling tumors seen in other organ systems [25,29]. Most thymomas show immunohistological patterns of bi-lineage cortical and medullary TEC differentiation as demonstrated by using markers of cortical TEC (B5T, PRSS16 and cathepsin V) and medullary TEC (CD40, claudin-4, AIRE and desmin) and markers of terminal mTEC maturation (involucrin and cytokeratin 10) [27,29].…”