The role of epithelial-mesenchymal transition in cancer pathology.

Invasion, the hallmark of malignancy, consists in the translocation of tumour cells from the initial neoplastic focus into neighbouring host tissues, and also allows tumour cells to penetrate vessel endothelium and enter the circulation to form distant metastasis. A histological pattern found at the periphery of carcinomas is the presence of individual malignant cells detached from the tumour mass and staying independently within the interstitial matrix of the stroma. While they are readily identified by the pathologist as invading malignant cells, their relationship with the compact-appearing portions of the tumour as well as the mechanism underlying the development of this pattern are not immediately evident at histological level.

Soft tissue sacrococcygeal chordoma with intracytoplasmic filamentous inclusions.

Extraskeletal chordoma arising within soft tissue is a rare occurrence. We report a case of chordoma that is unusual both for its location within the subcutaneous soft tissue of the sacrococcygeal region without involvement of adjacent bones and for the presence of eosinophilic roundish inclusion bodies within the cytoplasm of tumor cells. These bodies revealed immunoreactivity for cytokeratin and a fibrillar, partly whorled structure on the electron microscopic examination, consistent with an intermediate filament-based composition.

Preliminary study on the cytoarchitecture of the human parabrachial/Kölliker-fuse complex, with reference to sudden infant death syndrome and sudden intrauterine unexplained death.

The parabrachial/Kölliker-Fuse complex has been defined, in different animal species, to lie in the dorsolateral part of the pontine tegmentum and to be subdivided into three well-defined regions: the medial parabrachial nucleus, the lateral parabrachial nucleus, and the Kölliker-Fuse nucleus. Experimental studies have shown that the parabrachial/Kölliker-Fuse complex is involved in a variety of functional activities and above all plays an important role in respiratory modulation. In human brainstem, the cytoarchitecture and physiology of this complex have not yet been fully characterized.