ERCC1 predicts outcome in patients with gastric cancer treated with adjuvant cisplatin-based chemotherapy.

Background: Adjuvant chemotherapy is gaining an increasing role in resectable gastric cancer. Customizing chemotherapy on the basis of chemosensitivity may improve outcome, and putative predictive molecular markers have been mostly evaluated in Asian patients. We profiled key DNA and damage signaling factors and correlated them with outcome, in a European cohort.

Aberrant promoter methylation of beta-1,4 galactosyltransferase 1 as potential cancer-specific biomarker of colorectal tumors.

Epigenetic alterations, such as CpG islands methylation and histone modifications, are recognized key characteristics of cancer. Glycogenes are a group of genes which epigenetic status was found to be changed in several tumors. In this study, we determined promoter methylation status of the glycogene beta-1,4-galactosyltransferase 1 (B4GALT1) in colorectal cancer patients.

Mixed exocrine-neuroendocrine carcinoma of the nasal cavity: clinico-pathologic and molecular study of a case and review of the literature.

Sinonasal intestinal-type adenocarcinomas (ITACs) are rare neoplasms histologically resembling intestinal adenocarcinomas. Although a neuroendocrine differentiation in ITACs has been described, true mixed exocrine-neuroendocrine carcinomas, neoplasms in which each component represents at least 30 % of the lesion, are extremely rare and their molecular alterations are largely unknown. We describe herein the clinico-pathologic features, the methylation profile, chromosomal gains and losses, and mutation analysis of KRAS, BRAF and p53 in a nasal mixed exocrine-neuroendocrine carcinoma resected in a 79-year-old man.

Molecular characterization and response to cetuximab in a patient with refractory squamous cell anal carcinoma.

There are no standard chemotherapeutic options for patients with squamous cell anal carcinoma, relapsing and progressing on palliative cisplatin-based regimens. Similarly to other malignant conditions, monoclonal antibodies directed against the epidermal growth factor receptor may represent an attractive therapeutic strategy. Here we describe a patient who, based on molecular profile, benefited from the combination of irinotecan and cetuximab.