前沿科技及其它

Perhaps more than any other tumor marker associated with hematological neoplasia, the PMLIRAR-α hybrid gene has been shown to be important in the chinical practice. This aberration is absolutely APL-specific, being found in virtually 100% of cases and in no other tumors. Secondly, it identif ...

In this chapter, we will lay out the basics of experimental design: how to organize a study and determine sample size, what data to use, how to set up the database for analysis, what statistics are necessary for the analysis of the study, and what statistical packages are available to analyze the study. These ...

Clinical tests provide information that can be used by statistical methods to make patient outcome predictions. Outcomes are risk of disease, existence of disease, and prognosis. In this chapter we define and describe predictive factors and clinical prediction and explain how combini ...

Bladder cancer attacked approx 50,500 Americans in 1995 and killed about 11,200 (1). Bladder cancer appears to develop along two mam tracks: a deeply mvasive, high-grade form that rapidly becomes life-threatening, and a much less dangerous low-grade form (2–5). Although low-grade tumors are u ...

Archival paraffin blocks frequently are studied to evaluate the expression of biomarkers in tumors and disease states. The identification of biomarkers is becoming increasingly important to identify and characterize early preinvasive neoplastic lesions (1–3), and to correla ...

How different the practice of oncology would become if physicians could predict which of their patients will develop cancer, and, if the disease does occur, then determine who might remain disease-free. Programs stressing prevention, early detection, and prompt treatment could be armed ...

Many fundamental questions of biology reduce to a common technical problem, how to assess the phenotype of cells in relation to other cells or in relation to morphology. Traditionally, this problem has been approached by classical biochemical analysis, in which heterogeneous tissue is di ...

Several nuclear and membrane proteins are emerging as important markers of breast-cancer behavior. There is increasing evidence that these markers have potential therapeutic as well as prognostic value in the care of breast-cancer patients.

It has been known for some time that steroid and thyroid hormones can regulate cell proliferation (1,2) by stimulating cell division, as in the case of the thyroid hormone; by preventing proliferation, as in the case of the glucocorticoid hormone; or by inducing differentiation, as in the case of ret ...

Diagnosis of childhood malignancies, in particular solid tumors, is an enterprise that can be laden with a variety of uncertainties, inconsistencies, and morphologic subtlety, primarily caused by their tendency to recapitulate early organogenesis This dilemma 1s manifested by t ...

Ferritin is a cellular-storage protein with the main function of sequestering excess ferric iron and thus preventing high concentrations of soluble iron from becoming toxic to the cells. Dividing cells, both normal and neoplastic, have been shown to increase transferrm receptors in res ...

In Chapter 10 of thts volume and in prior publications (1,2), the matertals and methods used in immunohtstochemical techniques are described, and factors that affect the immunohistochemtcal detection of biomarker expression are discussed In this chapter, our semtquantbiattve me ...

The in vitro cultivation of cells and tissues forms an integral part of the work of every diagnostic cytogenetics laboratory, since it is from cells undergoing mitosis that metaphase chromosome preparations are obtained. Spontaneously dividing cells suitable for direct chromosome ...

Each chromosome in the somatic-cell complement can be uniquely identified by following a number of different banding procedures. The banding patterns are highly characteristic. The International System for Cytogenetic Nomenclature (ISCN) provides schematic representat ...

Development of the technique of in situ hybridization (ISH) propelled the merger of the fields of molecular genetics and cytogenetics. Refinement of the technique through the use of fluorescence (FISH) produced a remarkably powerful research and diagnostic tool.

Described here is a simple polymerase chain reaction (PCR) method for detecting rearrangements involving the bcl-2 gene. Rearrangements in bcl-2 are characteristic of follicular B-cell lymphoma (present in 80% of cases) and can occur in other malignancies (refs. 1–5; see review of bcl-2 in ref. ...

The study of human disease processes is an evolving field that is closely Intertwined with the development of technology. The advent of the polymerase cham reaction (PCR) allows investigators new opportunities for genetic analysis of pathological processes DNA and RNA analysis of small ...

p53 1s a nuclear phosphoprotem whose function is classified as a tumor suppressor (1) Mutattons in the p53 gene are currently regarded as the most common genetic alteration in human cancer (2), including breast cancer (reviewed in ref. 3). Most of these are point mutations within highly conserved r ...

Highly specrtic chromosomal translocations are found in several primitive sarcomas (1–3). Biologically, the breakpoints of these translocations involve various putative or confirmed transcription factor genes, some of which appear to participate in normal mesenchymal de ...

The t(14;18) (q32;21) chromosomal translocation is characteristic of follicle center cell lymphomas, involving 95% of cases (1,2). In addition, it has been found in a variety of other malignant lymphomas, including 20% of all diffuse B-cell lymphomas (3), diffuse small cleaved-cell lymphom ...