Molecular Assessment of Histopathological Staging in Squamous-Cell Carcinoma of the Head and Neck

Abstract

Among specimens initially believed to be negative by light microscopy, a substantial percentage of the surgical margins and lymph nodes from patients with squamous-cell carcinoma of the head and neck contained p53 mutations specific for the primary tumor. Patients with these positive margins appear to have a substantially increased risk of local recurrence. Molecular analysis of surgical margins and lymph nodes can augment standard histopathological assessment and may improve the prediction of local tumor recurrence.

Genomic alterations in nasopharyngeal carcinoma: loss of heterozygosity and Epstein-Barr virus infection

“…p53, the best known tumoursuppressor gene, is located on this chromosome (Carson et al, 1995). p53 alterations, including protein expression and mutations, are common in HNSCC while mutation of p53 in NPC is infrequent (Field et al, 1991;Boyle et al, 1993;Shin et al, 1994;Brennan et al, 1995;Chakrani et al, 1995). The LOH study of this chromosome supported the mutation data in which allelic loss of chromosome 17p was noticed in only 30% of the NPC, while previous reports revealed 50% LOH of the HNSCC (Nawroz et al, 1994;Field et al, 1995 (Thibodeau et al, 1993).…”

Usefulness of fluorine‐18 fluorodeoxyglucose positron emission tomography in patients with a residual structural abnormality after definitive treatment for squamous cell carcinoma of the head and neck

“…However, histologic proof is an imperfect indicator of true disease status, 19 and because we used a multifaceted evaluation of true disease status, including a minimum potential follow-up of 41 months, detection of residual disease would have occurred in falsenegative PET cases.…”

Multiplex PCR/LDR for detection of K-ras mutations in primary colon tumors

“…The respective LDR product corresponds to the presence of the speci®c K-ras mutation listed at the top of the ®gure Discussion Detection of tumor-speci®c mutations in blood, urine, pancreatic secretions, and stool of cancer patients raises the exciting possibility of improved cancer screening, diagnosis, and staging using non-invasive molecular tests (Berthelemy et al, 1995;Caldas et al, 1994;Hasegawa et al, 1995;Mao et al, 1996;Nawroz et al, 1996;Nollau et al, 1996;Sidransky et al, 1992;Tada et al, 1993;Trumper et al, 1994;Wu et al, 1994). Mutations can serve as clonal markers of shed or disseminated cancer cells and are excellent targets for diagnostic testing Brennan et al, 1995;Hayashi et al, 1994Hayashi et al, , 1995Mao et al, 1994). However, since no single gene mutation occurs in all tumors, e ective presymptomatic screening poses the problem of screening for multiple possible mutations in multiple genes.…”

“…Multiplexing of AS-PCR is limited by primer interference, which reduces the yield of correct product and increases the likelihood of mis-extension errors. To date, the most sensitive and quantitative method that circumvents the above problems employs phage cloning and plaque hybridization in combination with the use of radioactively-labeled probes (Brennan et al, 1995;Sidransky et al, 1992).…”