Three cases of embryonal rhabdomyosarcoma in the middle ear and mastoid in children are presented. Diagnosis was confirmed by histopathology. A multidisciplinary approach employing surgery, chemotherapy and radiation therapy is the method of choice in the management of this rare and highly lethal condition.

Cytokines are small proteins that mediate and regulate immunity. They are involved in the pathogenesis of many diseases including cancers. The concentration of these proteins in biological fluids (serum or plasma) and tissues in diseases may suggest pathway activation that leads to inflammatory response or disease progression. Therefore, these cytokines may be useful as a tool for screening, diagnosis classification between stages of disease or surveillance for therapy. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA) and bioassay have been used as a gold standard in cytokine level measurements in clinical practice. However, these methods allow only single cytokine detection at a time and ineffective for screening purposes. Hence, the innovation of multiplexing technology allows measurement of many of these soluble proteins simultaneously, thus allowing rapid, cost-effective and better efficiency by using a minute amount of sample. In this study, we explored the profiles of key inflammatory cytokines from the serum derived from diffuse large b-cell lymphoma (DLBCL, n =11) and healthy volunteers (N, n =11) using multiplexed bead-based immunoassays. We aimed to evaluate if the levels of these cytokines are significantly different in these two groups and explore the possible application of the cytokine as biomarkers in early-stage screening and/or surveillance. Our results show a significantly high level of IL-17A, IL-10 and IL-6 in DLBCL-derived serum compared to n-derived serum. These preliminary results were obtained from a small sample size and could be further validated with a larger sample size cohort to produce a panel of biomarkers for DLBCL. Our findings might be useful in developing a disease-specific panel for biomarker screening assay. This could be used for early diagnosis and/or treatment surveillance.

Per ARNT SIM domain containing 1 (PASD1) protein belongs to the Cancer Testis Antigen (CTA) family. It shows restricted expression in normal tissues but are highly expressed in cancer tissues. This study aims to further investigate PASD1 expression in Malaysian hematological malignancies patients as a potential biomarker for disease progression and vaccine development. Formalin-fixed Paraffin-Embedded (FFPE) tissue specimens from hematological malignancies patients were labeled with anti-PASD1-1 and anti-PASD1-2 antibodies using immunohistochemistry method. Our results show that among DLBCL patients, 7 samples were positive for PASD1-1, 2 samples were positive for PASD1-2 while 3 samples were positive for both of the antibodies. In addition, only 1 sample from T-cell Lymphoblastic Lymphoma (TLL) showed positive staining with PASD1-1. Other classes of hematological malignancies did not show any positive staining with either antibody. Antibody PASD1-1 stained the membrane and cytoplasm of the tumor cells strongly. Moderate nuclear labeling was also observed in some cases of DLBCL with PASD1-2. PASD1-1 staining was more frequent compared to PASD1-2 in most of the samples. Positive PASD1 staining was observed in patients with age range between 36-71 years old, higher in male cases than female by 54% and higher in Malay patients compared to Chinese by 77%.  Due to its frequency, the PASD1_v1 protein may play a role in the DLBCL initiation and progression. A higher number of PASD1 staining in DLBCL samples compared to other lymphoma subtypes may suggest that PASD1 may represent a potential for DLBCL subtyping marker.