• Asian Pacific Journal of Cancer Prevention
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• v.15 no.4
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• pp.1725-1730
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• 2014

Management of patients with stage II colorectal carcinomas remains challenging as 20 - 30% of them will develop recurrence. It is postulated that these patients may harbour nodal micrometastases which are imperceptible by routine histopathological evaluation. The aims of our study were to evaluate (1) the feasibility of multilevel sectioning method utilizing haematoxylin and eosin stain and immunohistochemistry technique with cytokeratin AE1/AE3, in detecting micrometastases in histologically-negative lymph nodes, and (2) correlation between nodal micrometastases with clinicopathological parameters. Sixty two stage I and II cases with a total of 635 lymph nodes were reviewed. Five-level haematoxylin and eosin staining and one-level cytokeratin AE1/AE3 immunostaining were performed on all lymph nodes retrieved. The findings were correlated with clinicopathological parameters. Two (3.2%) lymph nodes in two patients (one in each) were found to harbour micrometastases detected by both methods. With cytokeratin AE1/AE3, we successfully identified four (6.5%) patients with isolated tumour cells, but none through the multilevel sectioning method. Nodal micrometastases detected by both multilevel sectioning and immunohistochemistry methods were not associated with larger tumour size, higher depth of invasion, poorer tumour grade, disease recurrence or distant metastasis. We conclude that there is no difference between the two methods in detecting nodal micrometastases. Therefore it is opined that multilevel sectioning is a feasible and yet inexpensive method that may be incorporated into routine practice to detect nodal micrometastases in centres with limited resources.

• Clinical and Experimental Reproductive Medicine
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• v.49 no.4
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• pp.259-269
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• 2022

Objective: Animal-free scaffolds have emerged as a potential foundation for consistent, chemically defined, and low-cost materials. Because of its good potential for high biocompatibility with reproductive tissues and well-characterized scaffold design, we investigated whether polyglycolic acid (PGA) could be used as an animal-free scaffold instead of natural fibrin-agarose, which has been used successfully for three-dimensional human endometrial cell culture. Methods: Isolated primary endometrial cells was cultured on fibrin-agarose and PGA polymers and evaluated various design parameters, such as scaffold porosity and mean fiber diameter. Cytotoxicity, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and immunostaining experiments were conducted to examine cell activity on fabricated scaffolds. Results: The MTT (3-[4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl]-2,5 diphenyl tetrazolium bromide) assay and SEM results showed that endometrial cells grew and proliferated on both scaffolds. Immunostaining showed cytokeratin and vimentin expression in seeded cells after 7 days of culture. On both scaffolds, an epithelial arrangement of cultured cells was found on the top layer and stromal arrangement matrix on the bottom layer of the scaffolds. Therefore, fibrin-agarose and PGA scaffolds successfully mimicked the human endometrium in a way suitable for in vitro analysis. Conclusion: Both fibrin-agarose and PGA scaffolds could be used to simulate endometrial structures. However, because of environmental and ethical concerns and the low cost of synthetic polymers, we recommend using PGA as a synthetic polymer for scaffolding in research instead of natural biomaterials.

• Maxillofacial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
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• v.41
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• pp.15.1-15.5
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• 2019

Background: Actinic cheilitis (AC) is a variant of actinic keratosis which is known to be a premalignant condition that could develop into squamous cell carcinoma (SCC). Epimyoepithelial carcinoma (EC) is a very rare salivary gland (SG) neoplasm that has classical biphasic histologic findings of small tubules and glandular lumina surrounded by clear myoepithelial cells. Case presentation: We report a very rare case of AC occurring on the lower lip of a 70-year-old woman, which is developing to the EC later. Conclusions: Diverse appearances of AC include edematous reddish in the acute stage and grey-whitish or dried hyperkeratotic wrinkled lesions in the chronic stage for several months or even years. Accurate treatment of AC in its initial stage could be recommended to avoid further malignant transformation; proper management of clinically suspicious AC is suggested.

• IMMUNE NETWORK
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.117-123
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• 2007

Background: This study was designed to investigate the role of the hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) with regards to differentiation of somatic stem cells originating from the human umbilical cord blood (UCB) into hepatic lineage cells in vitro culture system. Methods: Mononuclear cells from UCB were cultured with and without HGF based on the fibroblast growth factor (FGF)-1, FGF-2, and stem cell factor. The cultured cells were confirmed by immunofluorescent staining analysis with albumin (ALB), cytokeratin-19 (CK-19), and proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) MoAb. ALB and CK-18 mRNA were also evaluated by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction. In order to observe changes in proliferating capacity with respect to the cultured period, CFSE with affinity to proliferating cells were tagged and later underwent flow cytometry. Results: In the HGF-treated group, cultured cells had a large oval shaped appearance with adherent, but easily detachable characteristics. In the HGF-non treated group, these cells were spindle-shaped with strong adherent characteristics. Expressions of ALB and CK-19 were evident in HGF-treated group compared to non-expression of those in to HGF-non treated group. Dual immunostaining analysis of the ALB producing cells showed presence of PCNA in their nuclei, and ALB and CK-18 mRNA were detected on the 21st day of cultured cells in the HGF-treated group. Conclusion: Our findings suggest that HGF has a pivotal role in differentiating somatic stem cells of human UCB into hepatic lineage cells in vitro.