Frozen section assessment in testicular and paratesticular lesions suspicious for malignancy: its role in preventing unnecessary orchiectomy.

To investigate the role of frozen section assessment in sparing unnecessary orchiectomy for suspected lesions, we retrospectively reviewed intraoperative testicular and paratesticular frozen section assessments performed at our institution between the years 1993 and 2010. Frozen section assessments were performed on 45 testicular lesions (age, 5-60 [mean, 32.2] years; lesion size, 0.

Skp2 overexpression is associated with loss of BRCA2 protein in human prostate cancer.

BRCA2 (breast cancer 2, early onset) is a tumor suppressor gene that confers increased susceptibility for prostate cancer (PCa). Previous in vitro experiments demonstrated that Skp2, an E3 ubiquitin ligase aberrantly overexpressed in PCa, is involved in the proteolytic degradation of BRCA2 in PCa cells, suggesting that the BRCA2-Skp2 interaction may play a role in prostate tumorigenesis. Herein, we investigated BRCA2 and Skp2 expression during PCa development using a prostate TMA.

Mitochondrial DNA depletion in prostate epithelial cells promotes anoikis resistance and invasion through activation of PI3K/Akt2.

Neoplastic transformation of prostate epithelium involves aberrant activation of anti-apoptotic and pro-invasive pathways triggered by multiple poorly understood genetic events. We demonstrated earlier that depletion of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) induces prostate cancer progression. Here, using normal prostate epithelial PNT1A cells we demonstrate that mtDNA depletion prevents detachment-induced apoptosis (anoikis) and promotes migratory capabilities onto basement membrane proteins through upregulation of p85 and p110 phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) subunits, which results in Akt2 activation and phosphorylation of downstream substrates GSK3beta, c-Myc, MMP-9, Mdm2, and p53.

Tissue elasticity properties as biomarkers for prostate cancer.

In this paper we evaluate tissue elasticity as a longstanding but qualitative biomarker for prostate cancer and sonoelastography as an emerging imaging tool for providing qualitative and quantitative measurements of prostate tissue stiffness. A Kelvin-Voigt Fractional Derivative (KVFD) viscoelastic model was used to characterize mechanical stress relaxation data measured from human prostate tissue samples. Mechanical testing results revealed that the viscosity parameter for cancerous prostate tissue is greater than that derived from normal tissue by a factor of approximately 2.