The Activation Status of the TGF-β Transducer Smad2 Is Associated with a Reduced Survival in Gastrointestinal Cancers: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
Aberrant function of Smad2, a crucial member of transforming growth factor beta (TGF-β) signaling, is associated with the development of malignancies, particularly in the gastrointestinal district. However, little is known about its possible prognostic role in such tumor types. With the first meta-analysis on this topic, we demonstrated that the lack of the activated form of Smad2 (phosphor-Smad2 or pSmad2), which was meant to be the C-terminally phosphorylated form, showed a statistically significant association with an increased risk of all-cause mortality in patients with gastrointestinal cancers (RR, 1.58; 95% CI, 1.05–2.37, p = 0.029, I2 = 84%), also after having adjusted for potential…
Tumor mutational burden on cytological samples: A pilot study.
Background Immune-checkpoint inhibitors (ICIs) represent an important treatment option for patients who have advanced stage non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). Currently, evaluation of the expression level of programmed death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) has proven highly successful as a positive predictive biomarker for ICIs. In addition to PD-L1, other promising predictive biomarkers are emerging, including high tumor mutational burden (TMB-H). However, measuring TMB-H remains challenging for several reasons, among which is the difficulty in obtaining adequate tissue material from NSCLC patients. There are no data in the current literature regarding the possibility of adopting cell blocks (CBs) for T…
Ki-67 assessment of pancreatic neuroendocrine neoplasms: Systematic review and meta-analysis of manual vs. digital pathology scoring
Ki-67 assessment is a key step in the diagnosis of neuroendocrine neoplasms (NENs) from all anatomic locations. Several challenges exist related to quantifying the Ki-67 proliferation index due to lack of method standardization and inter-reader variability. The application of digital pathology coupled with machine learning has been shown to be highly accurate and reproducible for the evaluation of Ki-67 in NENs. We systematically reviewed all published studies on the subject of Ki-67 assessment in pancreatic NENs (PanNENs) employing digital image analysis (DIA). The most common advantages of DIA were improvement in the standardization and reliability of Ki-67 evaluation, as well as its spee…