Hypereosinophilia represents a diagnostic challenge. As in the past, one must clinically exclude benign secondary reactive causes such as infection, hypersensitivity, paraneoplastic reaction, pulmonary and autoimmune diseases. If there is persistent, unexplained eosinophilia lasting more than 6 months without attributable cause, one might consider myeloproliferative neoplasms with dominant eosinophilia, chronic eosinophillic leukemia, rare myeloid and lymphoid neoplasms…
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Breast cancers metastasizes to the skin relatively often, where they problematically mimic primary cutaneous neoplasms both morphologically and immunohistochemically. Authors identified 12 cutaneous breast carcinoma metastases (including 11 ductal and one basal type carcinoma ) and 11 sweat gland carcinomas (including 5 eccrine, 3 microcystic and 3 porocarcinomas) which they immunohistochemically stained for mammaglobin, gross cystic disease fluid protein 15 (GCDFP-15),…
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Invasive poorly differentiated gastroesophageal junction adenocarcinoma with signet ring cell features - NEGATIVE for HER2 (immunohistochemistry)
HER2 gene amplification and/ or HER2 protein overexpression have been demonstrated in colon, bladder, ovarian, endometrial, lung, cervical, head and neck, esophageal, and gastric carcinomas, which represent non-mammary candidate targets for Herceptin therapy. The need for Herceptin therapy is augmented in aggressive,…
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For EGFR and ALK genes, the significance of respective mutations and translocations are clear, but the importance of gene copy number changes are not. Reporting in J Thorac Oncol. 2011;6: 21-27 senior author Edurne Arriola and coauthors investigate the relationship of ALK and EGFR gene status in pulmonary adenocarcinomas.
Using fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) to confirm that ALK gene translocations are infrequent in pulmonary adenocarcinomas,…
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Leading international pulmonary societies have jointly proposed a new classification for pulmonary adenocarcinoma in order to address limitations of the 2004 WHO classification system, which does not address new, predictive roles for molecular testing in management of lung cancer patients. The new classification is based on architectural growth patterns. It eliminates the subtype bronchioloalveolar carcinoma, classifies all former mucinous BACs as invasive mucinous…
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