Malignant tumours are traditionally classified according to their organ of origin and whether they are of epithelial (carcinomas) or mesenchymal (sarcomas) origin. By histological appearance the site of origin may often be confirmed. Using same treat...
Gastric cancer is a heterogenous group of tumours, and a better understanding of the carcinogenesis and cellular origin of the various sub-types could affect prevention and future treatment. Gastric neuroendocrine tumours (NETs) and adenocarcinomas t...
Somatostatin (SST), a growth hormone inhibitory peptide, is expressed in endocrine and non-endocrine tissues, immune cells and the central nervous system (CNS). Post-release from secretory or immune cells, the first most appreciated role that SST exh...
Interleukin-7 (IL-7) is a versatile cytokine that plays a crucial role in regulating the immune system’s homeostasis. It is involved in the development, proliferation, and differentiation of B and T cells, as well as being essential for the dif...
Tumours are complex systems with dynamic interactions between tumour cells, non-tumour cells, and extracellular components that comprise the tumour microenvironment (TME). The majority of TME’s cells are cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs), wh...
Background: We present an interesting case involving a tumour comprising both basal cell tumour cells and sarcomatoid tumour cells. An 86-year-old woman presented with an erythematous lesion on her left cheek. Clinical and dermoscopic findings sugges...
Synchronous primary malignancies occur in a small proportion of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) patients. Here, we analysed three synchronous primaries and a recurrence from one patient by comparing the genomic and transcriptomic profil...
Tumour-associated macrophages (TAMs) are an important part of the tumour microenvironment but knowledge of their distribution in canine soft tissue sarcomas (STSs) is limited to absent. We analysed 38 STSs retrieved from the veterinary pathology arch...
Autophagy is a degradative process occurring in eukaryotic cells to maintain homeostasis and cell survival. After stressful conditions including nutrient deprivation, hypoxia or drugs administration, autophagy is induced to counteract pathways that c...
Lactic acidosis, a hallmark of solid tumour microenvironment, originates from lactate hyperproduction and its co-secretion with protons by cancer cells displaying the Warburg effect. Long considered a side effect of cancer metabolism, lactic acidosis...
Cell death is a tightly regulated process which can be exploited in cancer treatment to drive the killing of the tumour. Several conventional cancer therapies including chemotherapeutic agents target pathways involved in cell death, yet they often fa...
Organoids are 3D organ-like structures grown from stem cells in vitro that mimic the organ or disease from which they are derived. Due to their stem cell origin, organoids contain a heterogeneous population of cells reflecting the diversity of cell t...
Background and Clinical Significance: Neuroendocrine expressing goblet cell adenocarcinomas (GCAs) are uncommon clinically aggressive tumours of the digestive system, originating almost exclusively in the ileocecal appendix. GCA’s singularity c...
Liquid biopsy is one of the fastest emerging fields in cancer evaluation. Circulating tumour cells and tumour-originated DNA in plasma have become the new targets for their possible employ in tumour diagnosis, and liquid biopsy can define tumour burd...
Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is the most aggressive subtype of breast cancer with a high risk of metastasis and therapeutic resistance. These issues are closely linked to the tumour microenvironment (TME) surrounding the tumour tissue. The as...
Background: Ovarian cancer (OC) has recently attracted attention for the use of PD-1/PD-L1 axis blocking agents, with durable activity reported only in a subset of patients. The most used biomarker for sensitivity to the PD-1/PD-L1 axis blockade is t...
The extracellular matrix (ECM) is composed of complex fibrillar proteins, proteoglycans, and macromolecules, generated by stromal, immune, and cancer cells. The components and organisation of the matrix evolves as tumours progress to invasive disease...
19 January 2022
Non-epithelial ovarian cancers (NEOC) are a group of uncommon malignancies that mainly includes germ cell tumours (GCT), sex cord-stromal tumours (SCST), and some extremely rare tumours, such as small cell carcinomas and sarcomas. Each of these class...
Pancreatic cancer remains among the most lethal cancers worldwide, with poor early detection rates and poor survival rates. Patient-derived xenograft (PDX) models have increasingly been used in preclinical and clinical research of solid cancers to fu...
Classic diffusely infiltrating lobular carcinoma has imaging features divergent from the breast cancers originating from the terminal ductal lobular units and from the major lactiferous ducts. Although the term “invasive lobular carcinoma&rdquo...
Tumours contain a small number of treatment-resistant cancer stem cells (CSCs), and it is through these that tumour regrowth originates at secondary sites, thus rendering CSCs an attractive target for treatment. Cancer cells adapt cellular metabolism...
DNA methylation is a heritable epigenetic mark that is fundamental to mammalian development. Aberrant DNA methylation is an epigenetic hallmark of cancer cells. Cell lines are a critical in vitro model and very widely used to unravel mechanisms of ca...
Similarly to other types of malignant tumours, the incidence of head and neck cancer is increasing globally. It is frequently associated with smoking and alcohol abuse, and in a broader sense also with prolonged exposure to these factors during agein...
Bovine Ocular Squamous Cell Carcinoma is considered the most common bovine tumour, causing significant economic losses, mainly by abattoir condemnations. To obtain a better insight into the genesis and neoplastic transformation, 19 samples collected...
Epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM) is a cell surface protein that was discovered as a tumour marker of epithelial origins nearly four decades ago. EpCAM is expressed at basal levels in the basolateral membrane of normal epithelial cells. Howev...
Primary liver cancer, consisting predominantly of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and cholangiocarcinoma (CCA), remains one of the most lethal malignancies worldwide. This high malignancy is related to the complex and dynamic interactions between tumo...
Neuroblastoma is the most frequent extracranial solid tumour in children, causing 10% of all paediatric oncology deaths. It arises in the embryonic neural crest due to an uncontrolled behaviour of sympathetic nervous system progenitors, giving rise t...
Metastasis frequently targets bones, where cancer cells from the primary tumour migrate to the bone marrow, initiating new tumour growth. Not only is bone the most common site for metastasis, but it also often marks the first site of metastatic recur...
Devil Facial Tumour Disease (DFTD) is an emerging infectious disease that provides an excellent example of how diagnostic techniques improve as disease-specific knowledge is generated. DFTD manifests as tumour masses on the faces of Tasmanian devils,...
Human and canine mammary tumours show partial claudin expression deregulations. Further, claudins have been used for directed therapeutic approaches. However, the development of claudin targeting approaches requires stable claudin expressing cell lin...
Src, originally identified as an oncogene, is a membrane-anchored tyrosine kinase and the Src family kinase (SFK) prototype. SFKs regulate the signalling induced by a wide range of cell surface receptors leading to epithelial cell growth and adhesion...
Experimental renal cancer caused by ochratoxin A (OTA) in rats was first defined in the US National Toxicology Program (1989) and raised questions about any aetiological role in human urinary tract tumours. A review of histopathology in several rat k...
Since its original identification as a leukocyte gelatinase/type V collagenase and tumour type IV collagenase, gelatinase B/matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-9 is now recognised as playing a central role in many aspects of tumour progression. In this re...
Background and Objectives: Mucin has been implicated via various mechanisms in the development and growth of tumour cells. However, mucin expression studies in salivary gland tumours are limited, especially with samples from minor salivary glands. Th...
Medulloblastoma is the most frequent malignant brain tumour in children. Medulloblastoma originate during the embryonic stage. They are located in the cerebellum, which is the area of the central nervous system (CNS) responsible for controlling equil...
Follicular dendritic cell sarcoma (FDCS) is a rare entity, often presenting a diagnostic challenge for both the pathologist and the clinician. It accounts for only 0.4% of soft-tissue sarcomas, and its underlying causes are largely unknown. Most of t...
Pancreatic cancer is one of the most lethal cancers, with an extremely poor prognosis. The development of more effective therapies is thus imperative. Natural origin compounds isolated from Plectranthus genus, such as parvifloron D (PvD), have cytoto...
Background: Non-melanocytic benign skin tumours encompass a diverse group of lesions, classified based on their cellular origin, such as epidermal, vascular, fibrous, neural, muscle, and adnexal tumours. Though they often reveal solitary lesions, mul...
Breast cancer is still the most frequent cause of cancer-related death in women worldwide. Often death is not caused only by the primary tumour itself, but also by metastatic lesions. Today it is largely accepted, that these remote metastases arise o...
All B cell leukaemias and a substantial fraction of lymphomas display a natural niche residency in the bone marrow. While the bone marrow compartment may only be one of several sites of disease manifestations, the strong clinical significance of mini...
Classical hairy cell leukaemia (HCLc), its variant form (HCLv), and splenic diffuse red pulp lymphoma (SDRPL) constitute a subset of relatively indolent B cell tumours, with low incidence rates of high-grade transformations, which primarily involve t...
Gastric cancer has reduced prevalence, but poor prognoses. To improve treatment, better knowledge of carcinogenesis and cells of origin should be sought. Stomach cancers are typically localized to one of the three mucosae; cardial, oxyntic and antral...
Benign tumours of the lung and endobronchial tree are uncommon. Endobronchial lipomas are extremely rare, with an incidence ranging from 0.1 to 0.5% of all lung tumours. Endobronchial lipomas originate from fat cells located in the peribronchial (and...
Schwannoma is a benign tumour of nerve sheath origin with latent malignant potential. All cranial nerves can give rise to schwannoma except for olfactory and optic nerves, which are devoid of Schwann cell. Schwanommas are usually asymptomatic and pre...
The tumour microenvironment (TME) plays a crucial role in the regulation of cell survival and growth by providing inhibitory or stimulatory signals. Extracellular vesicles (EV) represent one of the most relevant cell-to-cell communication mechanism a...
Retinoic acid is one of the most well-known agents able to induce differentiation in several types of tumours. Unfortunately, most of the tumours are refractive to the differentiation cues. The aim of this investigation was to analyse the effects of...
Several origins have been proposed for cancer-associated fibroblasts (CAFs), including resident CD34+ stromal cells/telocytes (CD34+SCs/TCs). The characteristics and arrangement of mammary CD34+SCs/TCs are well known and invasive lobular carcinoma of...
Gliomas are the most common malignant brain tumours. Among them, glioblastoma (GBM) is a grade four tumour with a median survival of approximately 15 months and still limited treatment options. Although a classical epithelial to mesenchymal transitio...
Renal cell carcinoma represents about 2% of all malignant tumours in adults. Metastases of the primary tumour in the breast make up to about 0.5–2% of the cases. Renal cell carcinoma metastases in the breast are extremely rare and have been spo...
CD8+ T cells are the main effector cells of anti-cancer immune response that can be regulated by various costimulatory and coinhibitory molecules, including members of the B7 family. B7 homolog 3 (B7-H3) appears as a promising marker for immunotherap...
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