Multidisciplinary Cancer Investigation

Introduction: Cancer is one the important factor of mortality in the world. Breast cancer is particularly prevalent among women. KIT gene, the primary factor of cell differentiation, proliferation and angiogenesis pathways, which its relation to different cancers has been proved. This gene expression increases in gastrointestinal cancers (90%), leukaemia (68%), mast cell tumors (70%), as well as melanoma. Previous studies has revealed that c-kit is expressed in the normal breast ductal epithelium as well as myoepithelial cells. Furthermore an increased expression in malignant tumors occurs. In this study we analyzed KIT gene expression level in patients suffering from sporadic breast cancer.
Materials and Methods: 48 female breast cancer patients were investigated to determinate KIT gene expression level using IHC method.
Results: 27 out of 48 patients tissues’ (56%) had increased of KIT gene expression in comparison with normal tissues, as a negative control.
Conclusions: Current study, similar to previous studies, provides the evidences that KIT gene expression level increases in tissues of breast cancer and the overexpression of this gene may be a risk factor for development of metastasis of sporadic breast cancer. KIT regulates apoptosis, cell differentiation, proliferation, and angiogenesis which could be an important factor in cancer development and increased risk of developing breast cancer. So this gene can be used for targeted therapy with tyrosine kinase inhibitors which have been successfully administrated in various cancers. Further studies with more detailed data are needed to verify these initial findings.

Introduction: Multiple myeloma (MM) is typically presented with abundant monoclonal secretion of one type of immunoglobulin. The other classes of immunoglobulins, which are uninvolved and not secreted by malignant plasma cells, could be decreased. A number of previous studies reported the effect of suppression of uninvolved immunoglobulins on the outcome of patients with myeloma. However, its effect in regard to the type of treatment was not studied so far. The current study aimed at investigating the effect of uninvolved immunoglobulins suppression on the outcome of patients with myeloma in each individual type of treatment.

Methods: In the current retrospective study, 140 myeloma cases diagnosed from 1999 to 2016 were studied. Patients were divided into 2 groups according to the first-line chemotherapy: 58 cases treated with Velcade-based and 81 cases with other agents. In the 2 groups, the effects of immunoglobulin suppression as well as other prognostic parameters on overall survival (OS) and progression-free survival (PFS) were evaluated.

Results: The effect of immunoglobulin suppression on patients’ outcome depended on the type of treatment. In the Velcade group, suppression of at least 2 classes of immunoglobulins was significantly related to poorer survival in terms of both OS and PFS. In the non-velcade group, suppression of immunoglobulins showed no significant relationship with OS or PFS.

Conclusions: For cases treated with Velcade, suppression of 2 types of immunoglobulins was related to poorer outcomes. Based on the results of the current study, it seemsed that immunoglobulin suppression was a predictive factor rather than a prognostic one. More studies with a larger sample size should be conducted to assess the outcome of patients treated with Velcade and severely suppressed immunoglobulins.

Conclusions: The proposed method demonstrated promising results for myeloma prognostication. The authors believe this approach would increase the strength and validity of staging of multiple myeloma.

Introduction: Utilizing lower limit of bone marrow plasma cells (BMPCs) is the main existing criterion for diagnosis of multiple myeloma (MM). According to the revised international myeloma working group (IMWG) diagnostic criteria, the value of 10% is agreed among experts as the cutoff level for diagnosis. Symptomatic patients with BMPC above this value are identified as definite cases of MM. However, there are MM patients who have BMPC of less than 10%. Considering abovementioned cutoff could delay the diagnosis which in turn results in adverse effects in patients’ clinical course.
Case presentation: This study represented data of consecutive patients with 5% to 10% BMPC at our center from 2004 to 2013. MM existed among patients, as expected. This series provides a quantitative approximation of MM prevalence in these cases.
Conclusion: The reported patients’ status demonstrates the limitations of the abovementioned cutoff criterion in myeloma diagnosis, and emphasizes the importance of employing further diagnostic procedures in patients with marginal amounts of BMPC and high clinical suspicion. It has been shown that supplementary examination is especially required for two subgroups of patients with certain clinical and laboratory characteristics. The detail of the cases and results are thoroughly explained in the paper.