Surgical resection of limited disease small cell lung cancer in the new era of platinum chemotherapy: Its time has come.

Objective: Although resection is not the standard of care in treating small cell lung cancer, new platinum drugs and modern staging have allowed the role of surgery to be reevaluated.

Methods: We reviewed our institutional experience of 1415 patients with small cell lung cancer from 1976 to 2002 among whom 82 (6%) underwent surgery with curative intent.

Results: Median age at surgery was 62 years, and small cell lung cancer of mixed morphology represented 14 of 82 (17%).

Tumor suppressor gene hypermethylation as a predictor of gastric stromal tumor behavior.

The growing understanding of the epigenetic changes associated with cancer, including aberrant promoter methylation of tumor suppressor genes that afford selective growth advantages to human neoplasms, suggests that the characterization of gene methylation patterns among gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs) may be useful for predicting tumor behavior. Thirty-eight c-kit-positive gastric stromal tumors were subjected to methylation-specific polymerase chain reaction (MSP) to detect promoter methylation associated with 11 candidate tumor suppressor genes (p16/INK4a, APC, MGMT, hMLH1, p73, E-cadherin, RAR-beta, RASSF1A, RB, ER, and DAPK), established to have a role in tumorigenesis of several solid human organs. Aberrant methylation of any of the 11 candidate tumor suppressor genes was detected in 84% of all GISTs.