Publications by authors named "Motoko Arakaki"
Background/aim: Thymic carcinoma is a rare cancer with poor prognosis in unresectable cases. Treatment efficacy of carboplatin+paclitaxel (CP), lenvatinib, S-1, and sunitinib remains uncertain, with some patients experiencing increased post-treatment liver metastasis.
Patients And Methods: We performed a retrospective analysis of patients with metastatic thymic carcinoma who received chemotherapy between 2006 and 2023 at the National Cancer Center Hospital.
Article Synopsis
- Most cervical adenocarcinomas are linked to HPV, but gastric-type cervical adenocarcinoma (GAS) is aggressive and HPV-independent, making treatment challenging due to chemotherapy resistance.
- Researchers created patient-derived xenografts (PDXs) from two GAS patients and analyzed protein biomarkers to explore drug development possibilities.
- The study found that HER3 was frequently overexpressed in both patient and PDX tumors, indicating potential new treatment avenues targeting HER3 and HER2 for GAS patients.
Prognostic value of hematologic indices and their association with the tumor microenvironment (TME) remain unclear in advanced soft tissue sarcoma (STS). We aimed to evaluate their prognostic value and correlation with the TME status in advanced STS treated with first-line doxorubicin (DXR) therapy. Clinical data and three hematological indices, including lymphocyte-to-monocyte ratio (LMR), platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio, and neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio, were collected from 149 patients with advanced STS.
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- Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) lacks hormone receptors and HER2, with limited clinical trial data on stage I cases; recent studies suggest differing prognoses between HER2-low and HER2-0 subtypes.
- A retrospective analysis of 42 stage I TNBC patients revealed that 11 were HER2-low and 31 were HER2-0, with median follow-up of over 10 years.
- Results showed HER2-low cases had significantly worse disease-free survival and a tendency for poorer overall survival compared to HER2-0 cases, confirming HER2 as a prognostic factor in early-stage TNBC.
Tissue specimen quality assurance is a major issue of precision medicine for rare cancers. However, the laboratory standards and quality of pathological specimens prepared in Asian hospitals remain unknown. To understand the methods in Southeast Asian oncology hospitals and to clarify how pre-analytics affect the quality of formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded (FFPE) specimens, a questionnaire surveying pre-analytical procedures (Part I) was administered, quality assessment of immunohistochemistry (IHC) staining and DNA/RNA extracted from the representative FFPE specimens from each hospital (Part II) was conducted, and the quality of DNA/RNA extracted from FFPE of rare-cancer patients for genomic sequencing (Part III) was examined.
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- Stromal tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) are important independent prognostic factors for untreated early-stage triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC), alongside other immune markers like CD8, PD-L1, and tertiary lymphoid structures (TLS).
- A study of 125 TNBC patients found that including CD8 and PD-L1 in prognostic models significantly improved predictions for patient outcomes compared to using TILs alone.
- High levels of CD8 were linked to better prognosis, while PD-L1 positivity indicated worse outcomes, suggesting that these biomarkers could refine prognostic assessments and guide future clinical trials in TNBC treatment.