DKI showed higher specificity than did conventional diffusion-weighted imaging for assessment of benign and malignant breast lesions. Patients with grade 3 breast cancer or tumors with high expression of Ki-67 were associated with higher kurtosis and lower diffusivity coefficients; however, this association must be confirmed in prospective studies.

BackgroundThe prognostic values of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) and TILs subsets in breast cancer (BC) are uncertain.MethodsA systematic literature search (MEDLINE, Web of Science, EMBASE, and the Cochrane Library to August 2014) was conducted for studies which met the eligibility criteria. The primary clinical outcome was defined as disease-free survival (DFS), overall survival (OS), and BC-specific survival (BCSS). Random or fixed-effects model was adopted to estimate the summary hazard ratio (HR).ResultsTwenty-five published studies comprising 22,964 patients were reviewed. Pooled analysis indicated that TILs were not prognostic markers for DFS and OS in overall population, but related to improved DFS (HR, 0.82; 95% CI, 0.76–0.88) and OS (HR, 0.79; 95% CI, 0.71–0.87) in triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) patients. For TILs subsets, CD8+ lymphocytes were associated with improved DFS (HR, 0.69; 95% CI, 0.56–0.84) and BCSS (HR, 0.78; 95% CI, 0.71–0.86) in overall population, while FOXP3+ lymphocytes were associated with reduced DFS (HR, 1.47; 95% CI, 1.01–2.05) and OS (HR, 1.50; 95% CI, 1.15–1.97). In estrogen receptor (ER) negative patients, CD8+ lymphocytes was also related to better BCSS. In addition, the high density of CD20+, CD3+ or low level of PD-1+ or γδ T lymphocytes indicated increased OS in limited studies.ConclusionTILs and TILs subsets are promising prognostic biomarkers in breast cancer, especially in TNBC.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small noncoding RNAs that regulate gene expression by interacting with the 3′ untranslated region (3′-UTR) of multiple mRNAs. Recent studies have linked miRNAs to the development of cancer metastasis. In this study, we show that miR-194 is specifically expressed in the human gastrointestinal tract and kidney. Moreover, miR-194 is highly expressed in hepatic epithelial cells, but not in Kupffer cells or hepatic stellate cells, two types of mesenchymal cells in the liver. miR-194 expression was decreased in hepatocytes cultured in vitro, which had undergone a dedifferentiation process. Furthermore, expression of miR-194 was low in liver mesenchymal-like cancer cell lines. The overexpression of miR-194 in liver mesenchymal-like cancer cells reduced the expression of the mesenchymal cell marker N-cadherin and suppressed invasion and migration of the mesenchymal-like cancer cells both in vitro and in vivo. We further demonstrated that miR-194 targeted the 3′-UTRs of several genes that were involved in epithelial-mesenchymal transition and cancer metastasis. Conclusion: These results support a role of miR-194, which is specifically expressed in liver parenchymal cells, in preventing liver cancer cell metastasis.