Pleuropulmonary Blastoma [PPB] is a very rare, highly aggressive and malignant tumor that originates from either the lungs or pleura. It occurs mainly in children aged less than five or six years. It has poor prognosis with three different subtypes: cystic [type I], combined cystic and solid [type II] and solid [type III]. PPB is treated with aggressive multimodal therapies including surgery an...

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a complex disease and a major cause of death in high endemic areas of hepatitis B virus (HBV) or hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. HCC has gone from being a universal death sentence to a cancer that can be prevented, detected at an early stage and effectively treated. Liver resection or tumour ablation techniques may be effective bridge to liver transplantatio...

In this edition of the Journal of Surgical Oncology Seminar series, we hoped to create a collection of review articles, detailing the current status of neoadjuvant strategies for the most common solid tumors. We thought that our readers would benefit from an up-to-date review of the topics, collected in a single publication. Neoadjuvant therapy was initially designed to preoperatively treat loc...

Triple negative breast cancers constitute approximately 15-20% of all breast cancers and they are more aggressive compared to other phenotypes (e.g. Luminals A and B and Her2+). Additionally, triple negative breast cancers are harder to treat because of the absence of targets for hormonal therapies such as ER, PR, and Her2+. Presently, there are only limited neoadjuvant therapy regimens availab...

I-SPY 2 (investigation of serial studies to predict your therapeutic response with imaging and molecular analysis 2) is a process targeting the rapid, focused clinical development of paired oncologic therapies and biomarkers. The framework is an adaptive phase II clinical trial design in the neoadjuvant setting for women with locally advanced breast cancer. I-SPY 2 is a collaborative effort amo...

Invasive bladder cancer is a chemotherapy-sensitive neoplasm. Historically, the development of cisplatin (Platinol)-based chemotherapy regimens has represented an important advance for patients with metastatic disease. More recently, investigations of new agents, such as gemcitabine (Gemzar) and paclitaxel (Taxol), have resulted in further options for these patients. Randomized trials comparing...

Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the fifth most common cancer in the world. Surgery offers the only hope for cure. However, the potentially curable method is only possible for a small proportion of those afflicted, for the rest, palliative treatment is indicated. Despite all the treatment options when used as monotherapy, patients with HCC have a poor long term prognosis. In this setting, mult...

The majority of patients with localized pancreatic cancer (PC) who undergo surgery followed by adjuvant therapy will develop metastatic disease, suggesting that surgery alone is not sufficient for cure and micrometastases are present even when are not clinically detected. As such, the delivery of early systemic therapy may be a rational alternative to a surgery-first approach, in an effort to p...

Cholangiocarcinoma is the 2nd most common primary hepatic malignancy with an incidence in the United States ranging from 0.40.9/100,000 with 5 year survival estimated at 2.6-4.4% [1]. The average age at diagnosis of cholangiocarcinoma is 50 years old with curative options including surgical resection, neoadjuvant chemoradiation, and liver transplantation [2]. Staging is based on anatomic locati...

Paraneoplastic neurologic disorders are extremely rare in cancer patients and are most commonly associated with certain tumors, such as ovarian cancer, small cell lung cancer, and breast cancer. We report here a paraneoplastic neurological syndrome in a 53-year-old man with colonic adenocarcinoma with a solitary liver metastasis. His paraneoplastic syndrome was successfully treated by methylpre...