Effect of preoperative chemotherapy on the histopathological classification of gastric cancer.

Background: In the era of individualized gastric cancer (GC) treatment, accurate determination of histological subtype becomes increasingly relevant. As yet, it is unclear whether preoperative chemotherapy may affect the histological subtype. The aim of this study was to assess concordance in histological subtype between pretreatment biopsies and surgical resection specimens before and after the introduction of perioperative treatment.

Identification of a quantitative MINT locus methylation profile predicting local regional recurrence of rectal cancer.

Purpose: Risk assessment for locoregional disease recurrence would be highly valuable in preoperative treatment planning for patients undergoing primary rectal tumor resection. Epigenetic aberrations such as DNA methylation have been shown to be significant prognostic biomarkers of disease outcome. In this study, we evaluated the significance of a quantitative epigenetic multimarker panel analysis of primary tumors to predict local recurrence in rectal cancer patients from a retrospective multicenter clinical trial.