Pathology in prostate research: optimizing the pathological data

Primary signet ring cell carcinoma of the prostate treated by radical cystoprostatectomy and chemoradiotherapy

Primary signet ring cell carcinoma (SRCC) of the prostate is very rare. Although SRCC is primarily found in the stomach and colon, it can also be found in the pancreas, breast, thyroid, bladder, and prostate. We recently diagnosed and treated a case of primary SRCC of the prostate. A 56-year-old Korean man was referred to our institution for evaluation of a one-month history of hematuria and recently identified bladder mass. Transurethral resection of the bladder tumour was performed and histological and immunohistochemical evaluation revealed a diagnosis of SRCC with tumour invading into the outer half of the deep muscularis propria. After three weeks, the patient had radical cystoprostatectomy with ileal conduit. Tumour involved both prostate and bladder, but the centre of the tumour was located in the prostate. Duodenoscopy and colon fibroscopy both indicated no evidence of tumour origin in the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. Overall, this tumour was regarded as primary SRCC of the prostate. Concurrent chemoradiotherapy (CCRT) using leucovorin and fluorouracil was initiated two months later. The patient eventually developed bone and liver metastases and died of hepatopathy.

Metabolic imaging in multiple time scales

We report here a novel combination of time-resolved imaging methods for probing mitochondrial metabolism in multiple time scales at the level of single cells. By exploiting a mitochondrial membrane potential reporter fluorescence we demonstrate the single cell metabolic dynamics in time scales ranging from microseconds to seconds to minutes in response to glucose metabolism and mitochondrial perturbations in real time. Our results show that in comparison with normal human mammary epithelial cells, the breast cancer cells display significant alterations in metabolic responses at all measured time scales by single cell kinetics, fluorescence recovery after photobleaching and by scaling analysis of time-series data obtained from mitochondrial fluorescence fluctuations. Furthermore scaling analysis of time-series data in living cells with distinct mitochondrial dysfunction also revealed significant metabolic differences thereby suggesting the broader applicability (e.g. in mitochondrial myopathies and other metabolic disorders) of the proposed strategies beyond the scope of cancer metabolism. We discuss the scope of these findings in the context of developing portable, real-time metabolic measurement systems that can find applications in preclinical and clinical diagnostics.