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Pemphigus vulgaris is an autoimmune blistering disease of the skin and mucous membrane. It is mediated by autoantibody against desmoglein 3, an intracellular adhesion glycoprotein that forms a part of desmosome. Loss of tolerance to this autoantigen happens for a still unknown reason. However, this disease has a very strong association with some human leukocyte antigen molecules whose structure favors the binding of certain peptide of desmoglein 3. The mechanism of the action of autoantibody has turned out to be more complicated than it was thought, and it is not well established yet. Nevertheless, in the past few years, important discoveries have been made that point to a role of autoantibodies in staining different signaling cascades that lead to loss of adhesion between keratinocyte and death of these cells resulting in acantholysis as histologic manifestation and blister as clinical manifestation.

Oral carcinogenesis is a stepwise accumulation of genetic damage over time. The older cancer diagnostic aids had less specificity, were time-consuming, and produced interobserver bias. Technological and therapeutic advances in the recent years have helped to diagnose and treat this disease at an early stage. Advances in molecular biology over the past decade have helped us to enhance our understanding of the complex interplay between genetic, transcriptional, and translational alterations in human cancers. This review provides a summary of all the diagnostic modalities that were used earlier and the newer more advanced techniques with merits and demerits of each technique described briefly.

Odontogenic tumors represent a broad spectrum of lesions ranging from benign to malignant lesions. Benign odontogenic lesions are rare entities that are important due to their local aggressive nature and equally challenging to handle. Odontogenic myxoma (OM) in children is unusual and extremely rare. Till date, only 40 such cases have been reported in the literature with high recurrence rate between 10 and 33% with an average of 25%. We report a rare case of aggressive OM in the maxilla of a female child of 1 year and 8 months. Timely and apt histopathological diagnosis of OM enabled the surgeons to arrive at a conservative treatment plan considering esthetic and age of the child. No recurrence was noted on follow-up of the case for 6 months. The patient is kept under observation.

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