Multimodality treatment in recurrent/metastatic squamous cell carcinoma of head and neck: current therapy, challenges, and future perspectives.

Squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck is a complex group of diseases that presents a challenge to the clinician. The prognosis in the recurrent/metastatic disease is particularly dismal, with a median survival of approximately 12 months. Recently, the personalized and multimodal approach has increased prognosis by integrating locoregional strategies (salvage surgery and stereotactic radiotherapy) and systemic treatments (chemotherapy, immunotherapy, and target therapy).

Spindle-cell myoepithelioma: A rare case in a finger of a 15-year-old boy.

Cutaneous myoepithelioma is a rare neoplasm of the skin that has become more widely recognized in recent years despite significant diagnostic pitfalls. It is a benign neoplasm with a high recurrence rate if not excised radically, and must be distinguished from its malignant counterpart. Few cases have been described so far and, to our knowledge, no cases in the finger of a child exist in the literature.

Hepatic Radiotherapy in Addition to Anti-PD-1 for the Treatment of Metastatic Uveal Melanoma Patients.

Uveal melanoma is the most common ocular tumor with frequent metastatic spread to the liver. Immune checkpoint inhibitors have demonstrated poor results in this disease. The addition of hepatic radiotherapy to anti-PD-1 could enhance the sensitivity to immunotherapy.

18F-FDG and 68Ga-DOTATOC PET/CT Findings in a Case of Abdominal Leiomyosarcoma.

We report the case of a 58-year-old man with mesenteric nodule at CT performed for abdominal pain. In the suspicion of neoplastic disease, he underwent 18F-FDG PET/CT that did not show abnormal uptake. The nodule was monitored alternating CT and MRI.

Cisplatin, dacarbazine and vinblastine as first line chemotherapy for liver metastatic uveal melanoma in the era of immunotherapy: a single institution phase II study.

No standard therapy is established for metastatic uveal melanoma. Liver involvement in uveal melanoma may lead to organ impairment, which represents a common cause of death. Tumor shrinkage might improve survival by delaying hepatic failure.

Unexpected side effect in mCRC: A care-compliant case report of regorafenib-induced hyperammonemic encephalopathy.

Rationale: Regorafenib represents a treatment option in heavily pretreated patients affected by metastatic colorectal cancer (mCRC). Its safety profile is typical of small-molecule tyrosine-kinase inhibitors (TKIs) and most adverse events are manageable.

Patient Concerns: A 56 years-old Caucasian man affected by mCRC with normal hepatic reserve was treated with regorafenib as second-line treatment.

Is surgery mandatory in locally advanced gastrointestinal stromal tumors after imatinib? A case report and literature review.

Oesophageal gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs) are rare neoplasms (about 2% of all GISTs); radical surgery is the standard treatment of all GISTs but in case of locally advanced and unresectable disease no clear treatment guide lines are available. Studies including neoadjuvant imatinib mesylate (IM) are relatively recent, includes small sample size of heterogeneous patients and do not report a standardized duration of neoadjuvant treatment. The main question still remains whether surgery after neoadjuvant IM gives a survival benefit in locally advanced disease.

Position paper of the Italian Association of Medical Oncology on early palliative care in oncology practice (Simultaneous Care).

One of the priorities of personalized medicine regards the role of early integration of palliative care with cancer-directed treatments, called simultaneous care. This article, written by the Italian Association of Medical Oncology (AIOM) Simultaneous and Continuous Care Task Force, represents the position of Italian medical oncologists about simultaneous care, and is the result of a 2-step project: a Web-based survey among medical oncologists and a consensus conference. We present the opinion of more than 600 oncologists who helped formulate these recommendations.

Gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs) and second malignancies: A novel "sentinel tumor"? A monoinstitutional, STROBE-compliant observational analysis.

Several evidences showed that patients with gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GISTs) develop additional malignancies. However, thorough incidence of second tumors remains uncertain as the possibility of a common molecular pathogenesis.A retrospective series of 128 patients with histologically proven GIST treated at our institution was evaluated.

Nevirapine restores androgen signaling in hormone-refractory human prostate carcinoma cells both in vitro and in vivo.

Background: Prostate carcinomas are androgen-dependent neoplasms which progress toward a hormone-independent phenotype during hormone-deprivation therapy. We evaluated nevirapine, a reverse transcriptase inhibitor, as a new treatment in hormone-refractory prostate carcinoma cells with the aim of restoring the androgen-dependency of tumor cells, the rationale being that endogenous reverse transcriptase is up-regulated in transformed cells and reverse transcriptase inhibitors exert a differentiating activity in human tumors.

Methods And Results: Nevirapine induced extensive reprogramming of gene expression in vitro with up-regulation of genes that might be silenced during prostate tumor progression (i.

Docetaxel and oxaliplatin combination in second-line treatment of patients with advanced gastric cancer.

Background: In advanced gastric cancer few data are available on the efficacy or safety of new drug combination regimens after progression following first-line chemotherapy.

Methods: Patients with histologically confirmed advanced gastric cancer and Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group (ECOG) performance status (PS) less than 2, progressing after first-line chemotherapy, were eligible. Patients were treated with docetaxel 75 mg/m(2) on day 1 and oxaliplatin 80 mg/m(2) on day 2, every 3 weeks, until progression or unacceptable toxicity.

Inhibition of endogenous reverse transcriptase antagonizes human tumor growth.

Undifferentiated cells and embryos express high levels of endogenous non-telomerase reverse transcriptase (RT) of retroposon/retroviral origin. We previously found that RT inhibitors modulate cell growth and differentiation in several cell lines. We have now sought to establish whether high levels of RT activity are directly linked to cell transformation.

Biological factors and therapeutic modulation in radiotherapy of head and neck cancer.

The most recent clinical studies are increasingly concerned about the molecular factors in terms of prognosis, predictivity of response to treatments and development of novel, targeted therapeutic strategies. An integrated diagnostic and prognostic approach is envisaged where molecular biology with the study of biological markers "integrates" TNM to enhance the control of primary disease, resulting in a prolonged disease-free overall survival, earlier and effective control of locoregional progression and better quality of life (organ and function preservation). The prognostic or predictive role of the response to treatment for some markers (p53, EGFR, cyclin D1, telomerase activity) is defined in part in head and neck tumors.

Expression of vascular endothelial growth factor, mitogen-activated protein kinase and p53 in human colorectal cancer.

Background: VEGF is a growth factor involved in the regulation of angiogenesis, a process that plays a central role in tumor growth. It has been suggested that mutations of p53 and activation of the Ras/MAPK pathway may contribute to the up-regulation of VEGF expression and induction of angiogenesis.

Patients And Methods: We explored the expression of p53 and VEGF and p44MAPK phosphorylation in 43 human colorectal carcinomas, as well as in peritumoral mucosas, and in normal mucosas in order to establish a correlation between VEGF expression and either mutations of p53 or phosphorylation of p44MAPK.