Canonical and noncanonical Wnt pathways: a comparison between endometrial cancer type I and atrophic endometrium in Brazil.

Context And Objective: The Wnt pathway is involved in tumorigenesis of several tissues. For this reason, we proposed to evaluate Wnt gene expression in endometrial cancer type I.

Design And Setting: Cross-sectional study on materials gathered from the tissue bank of the Department of Pathology, Universidade Federal de São Paulo.

The intrinsic apoptotic signaling pathway in gastric adenocarcinomas of Brazilian patients: Immunoexpression of the Bcl-2 family (Bcl-2, Bcl-x, Bak, Bax, Bad) determined by tissue microarray analysis.

This study was undertaken to investigate the immunoexpression of Bcl-2 family proteins (Bcl-2, Bcl-x, Bax, Bak and Bad) and to evaluate the correlation between the immunoexpression of these proteins and that of cleaved caspase 3, Ki-67 and p53. A tissue microarray (TMA) paraffin block was constructed using gastric carcinoma tissue (test group) and adjacent normal gastric mucosa (control group) from 87 patients who had not previously undergone radiotherapy or chemotherapy. Sections from the TMA block (4 µm) were subjected to immunohistochemistry for Bcl-2, Bcl-x, Bax, Bak, Bad, p53, Ki-67 and cleaved caspase-3.

Immunoexpression of inhibitors of apoptosis proteins and their antagonist SMAC/DIABLO in colorectal carcinoma: correlation with apoptotic index, cellular proliferation and prognosis.

The inhibitors of apoptosis proteins (IAPs) act by directly blocking cleaved caspase-3 (XIAP) or the protein SMAC/DIABLO, an antagonist. The inhibition of XIAP activity or the increase of SMAC activity might improve the therapeutic response of the patients. This work evaluated the immunoexpression of IAPs and SMAC in colorectal carcinoma and their correlation with apoptotic index (AI), cellular proliferation, p53 protein immunoexpression and patient survival rate.

Analysis of Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) nuclear antigen 1 subtypes in EBV-associated lymphomas from Brazil and the United Kingdom.

EBNA-1 is the only viral protein consistently expressed in all cells latently infected by Epstein-Barr virus (EBV). There is a high frequency of sequence variation within functionally important domains of EBNA-1, with five subtypes identified. Individuals may be infected with multiple EBV strains (classified according to EBNA-1 subtype), but Burkitt's lymphoma (BL) tumours carry a single subtype and exhibit some subtype preference.