Clinical Role of Circulating Epstein‐Barr Virus DNA as a Tumor Marker in Lymphoepithelioma‐Like Carcinoma of the Lung

Abstract

Nineteen Chinese patients with lymphoepithelioma-like carcinoma (LELC) of the lung were tested for Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) DNA in their serum samples by a quantitative polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technique. There was prospective serial monitoring of the serum in seven patients with advanced inoperable or relapsing disease. Five other patients at first diagnosis and two patients at relapse had only a single serum sample available. Serum samples were also taken from three other patients who had prior curative surgery and two patients with prolonged disease remission. Measurable levels of EBV DNA were detected in 11 of 12 patients with a pre-therapy serum sample and a clinically evident tumor. A low level of EBV DNA was also detectable in one of the two other patients whose first serum samples were obtained after some chemotherapy. There was no detectable EBV DNA in the five patients without evidence of tumor. The longitudinal serum EBV DNA profile of seven patients showed consistent correlation with response to therapy and clinical outcome. Patients with a pre-therapy serum EBV DNA >10,000 copies/mL had significantly inferior overall survival. This study suggests that circulating serum EBV DNA can be used as a tumor marker in the clinical management of patients with LELC of the lung.

Clinicopathological features and prognosis of primary pulmonary lymphoepithelioma-like carcinoma

“…Clinicopathological features and prognosis of primary pulmonary lymphoepithelioma-like carcinoma (EBER) was found in tumor cells (6,7) and EBV DNA was detectable in the serum of LELC patients (8), suggesting that the EBV infection was closely associated with the pathogenesis of LELC (9). The mutations of driver oncogenes were usually observed in lung cancers, whereas, rare or no mutations were found in the common oncogenes such as EGFR, KRAS, ALK, BRAF, ROS1, and p53 (7,(10)(11)(12)(13), implying that the mutagenesis of these genes was not involved in the tumorigenesis of LELC.…”

Primary lymphoepithelioma-like carcinoma of the lung in an adolescent girl with unusual presentations

“…[4][5][6][7] It occurs mostly in the middle age without any definite sex predilection. 5 In contrast to the non small cell carcinomas of the lung, primary LELC has been found to have minimal association with cigarette smoking.…”

“…Most of the symptomatic patients presented with complaints like cough, chest pain or haemoptysis. [4][5][6][7] It usually forms unilateral, solitary sub-pleural nodule without affecting major bronchi. However, some cases with bilateral extensive disease at the time of presentation have also been described.…”

“…3 Our knowledge about the tumour is mostly derived from three large cohorts from south-east Asia. [4][5][6][7] We report this rare case in a 14-year-old girl who presented with unusual symptoms.…”

Expression of genes of cytokines, transcription factors and differentiation antigens in human dendritic cells activated by double-stranded DNA

“…Источником этой ДНК могут быть соматические, ядросодержащие клетки, по-гибшие путем апоптоза или некроза; эритробласты, ядра которых энуклеируются в процессе дифференцировки в эритроциты; лимфоциты в процессе их апоптотической гибели после стимуляции (Stroun et al, 2001;Choi et al, 2005;Тамкович и др., 2008). Кроме того, при развитии инфекционных заболеваний в крови больных появляются нуклеиновые кислоты возбудителей (Ngan et al, 2004), а во время беременности в крови матери детектируется фе-тальная ДНК (Lo et al, 1997). На данный момент нет разра-ботанной концепции оборота экстраклеточной self ДНК в жидкостных средах организма.…”