CD1a down-regulation in primary invasive ductal breast carcinoma may predict regional lymph node invasion and patient outcome.

AIMS: CD1a is a molecule belonging to the highly conserved group of CD1 proteins. Its expression in dendritic cells is related to the presentation of tumour-derived glycolipid antigens to T cells and, consequently, the development of a successful antitumour response. The aim was to investigate the presence of CD1a+ cells in both primary tumours and lymph nodes (LN) of a series of 35 invasive ductal carcinomas by both immunohistochemistry and reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction. METHODS AND RESULTS: CD1a antigen was more expressed in N0 than N1 breast cancer (P < 0.0001) in both primary lesions and LN metastases and correlated positively and significantly with oestrogen (ER) (P =…

Common polymorphisms in Th1 and Th2 cytokine genes and susceptibility to pancreatic adenocarcinoma

Isolation and characterization of human extraembryonal mesoderm mesenchymal stem cells from umbilical cord

Association between single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of IL-6, TNF-alpha and VEGF-A genes, and susceptibility to hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC)

Background: Many studies have demonstrated the association between SNPs and susceptibility to the development of diseases such as autoimmune diseases and neoplasms. These allelic variations may involve regulatory and coding regions of cytokine genes and may influence their transcriptional activity and, as a consequence, their protein levels. Hepatocarcinogenesis is a multi-step and multi-factorial process in which both environmental and genetic factors are involved. Liver cirrhosis (LC) of both HBV or HCV origin is considered the most important risk factors for HCC. Objectives: We evaluated the frequency of genetic polymorphisms of the cytokines IL-6 and TNFalpha and of VEGF-A in a group of…