Colorectal medullary carcinoma: heterogeneous presentations of a rare clinico-pathological entity. Report of two cases.

Colorectal medullary carcinoma (CMC) is a rare subset of minimally differentiated carcinomas. CMC tend to be right-sided and present at an advanced stage. Despite this, distant metastases are rare at presentation.

Pattern and distribution of immunoglobulin VH gene usage in a cohort of B-CLL patients from a Northeastern region of Italy.

We analyzed individual VH gene rearrangements in 55 consecutive B-chronic lymphocytic leukemia (B-CLL) patients collected from a northeastern region of Italy, stressing the possible differences related to geographic characteristics of the cohorts studied. Considering the percentage of somatic mutations present in the VH gene sequences and using the 98% cut-off value, 38 of the 55 B-CLL (69%) patients displayed somatic hypermutations and 17 (31%) had a germline configuration. Our results confirm and extend the observations of a bias in the use of certain VH, DH, and JH genes among B-CLL cells.