[Clinical significance and mechanism of upregulation of PI3Kp110α in non-small cell lung carcinoma]

Objective: To investigate the clinical significance and mechanism of upregulation of phosphoinositide 3-kinase p110α(PI3Kp110α)in non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC). Methods: Expressions of PI3Kp110α and other components in PI3K signaling pathway (including phospho-Akt (p-Akt, Ser 473), MET, ROS1, HER-2, ALK, total EGFR and mutant EGFR) and p53 (the transcription factor of PIK3CA) mutation in NSCLC were detected by immunohistochemistry. The relationships between PI3Kp110α expression and clinicopathological characteristics, expressions of other proteins in PI3K pathway and p53 mutation were analyzed. Results: In 170 NSCLC patients, 72 cases (42.4%) showed lower expression and 98 cases (57.6%) showed higher expression of PI3Kp110α. Upregulation of PI3Kp110α was not significantly associated with gender, age, T stage and pathologic grade (P>0.05). While upregulation of PI3Kp110α was significantly associated with smoking status of patients, pathologic classification, N stage, TNM stage and Ki-67 index (P<0.05). Expression of PI3Kp110α was positively correlated with expressions of MET (P<0.05) and mutant EGFR (P=0.018), while not significantly related with expressions of p-Akt(Ser473), HER-2, ALK, ROS1, total EGFR or p53 mutation (P>0.05). Conclusions: Upregulation of PI3Kp110α is closely related with tumorigenesis of non-smoking lung adenocarcinoma. MET overexpression and EGFR mutation may be crucial to upregulate expression of PI3Kp110α in NSCLC. Overexpression of PI3Kp110α may inhibit tumor cell proliferation in NSCLC through a different pathway other than classical PI3K pathway. Upregulation of PI3Kp110α may predict favorable prognosis of NSCLC patients.

[Minor salivary duct carcinoma of the larynx: a case report]

Salivary duct carcinoma SDC is a rare disease, especially in the larynx. From the pathology point of view, SDC histomorphology is very similar to breast ductal carcinoma. From the immunohistochemistry, epithelial antibodies are positive, but the SMA is negative. From the review of papers, total resection is the first choice for the treatment, but the local recurrence and distant metastasis are the main influence factors for survival rate. Now we still lack the clinical experience for such disease.

[Clinical significance of expression of PI3Kp110α in breast cancer]

Objective: To study the clinical significance of PI3Kp110α expression in breast cancer. Methods: The expressions of PI3Kp110α, HER2, PTEN, p-Akt and Ki-67 in invasive ductal carcinoma (IDC), adjacent ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) and normal breast tissue were detected by immunohistochemistry in 102 cases of breast cancer. The expression of PI3Kp110α in IDC was compared with those in DCIS and normal breast tissues. Correlations between expression of PI3Kp110α and expression of HER2, PTEN, p-Akt and Ki-67 index in IDC were analyzed. Correlation between expression of PI3Kp110α and stage of IDC was studied as well. Results: In the normal breast tissues, there were 97 cases (95.1%) with low level and 5 cases (4.9%) with high level expression of PI3Kp110α. In the DCIS tissues, there were 67 cases (65.7%) with low level and 35 cases (34.3%) with high level expression of PI3Kp110α. In the IDC tissues, there were 14 cases (13.7%) with low level and 88 cases (86.3%) with high level expression of PI3Kp110α. The difference between expression of PI3Kp110α in normal breast tissue, DCIS and IDC was significant (P<0.001). In the IDC tissues, expression of PI3Kp110α was negatively correlated with expression of HER2 (r_s=-0.213, P=0.032) and PTEN (r_s=-0.197, P=0.047), while was not significantly correlated with expression of p-Akt (P=0.119) and Ki-67 index (P=0.636). In contrast, expressions of HER-2 and p-Akt were positively correlated with Ki-67 index (P=0.001, P=0.035), while expression of HER2 was not correlated with p-Akt (P=0.177). Expression of PI3Kp110α was negatively correlated with T stage and TNM stage (P=0.003, P=0.016), while not correlated with N stage and M stage(both P>0.05). Expression of HER-2 was positively correlated with T stage (P=0.037), while not correlated with N stage, M stage and TNM stage (P>0.05 for all). Neither Ki-67 index nor expression of PTEN and p-Akt (P=0.194) were correlated with T stage, N stage, M stage and TNM stage. Conclusions: Expression of PI3Kp110α plays an important role in oncogenesis and development of breast cancer. Based on the fact that expression of PI3Kp110α is negatively correlated with expression of HER2 and PTEN and with T stage and TNM stage, we may conclude that increased expression of PI3Kp110α is another independent pathway in breast cancer development, and breast cancer patients with high expression of PI3Kp110α may have a better prognosis.

CS based confocal microwave imaging algorithm for breast cancer detection

Based on compressive sensing (CS) technology, a high resolution confocal microwave imaging algorithm is proposed for breast cancer detection. With the exploitation of the spatial sparsity of the target space, the proposed image reconstruction problem is cast within the framework of CS and solved by the sparse constraint optimization. The effectiveness and validity of the proposed CS imaging method is verified by the full wave synthetic data from numerical breast phantom using finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) method. The imaging results have shown that the proposed imaging scheme can improve the imaging quality while significantly reducing the amount of data measurements and collection time when compared to the traditional delay-and-sum imaging algorithm.