Wilms' tumor is one of the most common pediatric malignancies. Survival rates have increased dramatically over the last few decades. This increased survival means that there is an ever growing population of patients susceptible to the late effects of their initial therapy. Survivors of Wilms' tumor have a substantially higher rate of development of secondary neoplasms compared to general popula...

PURPOSE Molecular analysis of melanoma sentinel nodes (SN) is sensitive, but poorly specific because metastases cannot be distinguished from benign nevus inclusions (BNI). We investigated whether quantitative reverse transcription-PCR (RT-PCR) detection of MART-1 and tyrosinase mRNAs could improve this specificity and contribute to SN assessment. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN Two hundred twenty SNs fro...

Chromosomes and histology were successfully studied in 33 childhood renal tumors. Thirty-one tumors were classified as one of four subtypes of Wilms' tumor. Of 24 typical Wilms' tumors, 12 had hyperdiploidy with nonrandom trisomies, mostly including +6 and/or +12. Three typical Wilms' tumors with an 11p13 deletion or a pericentric inversion with a break in 11p13 were not associated with aniridi...

background: although there is convincing data in support of the effectiveness of hyperthermia in tumor therapy, the molecular mechanisms underlying the clinical effects of hyperthermia are still poorly understood. objective: to investigate natural killer (nk) cell cytotoxicity against heat-treated sw-872 and hela tumor cell lines. methods: nkg2d ligands and hla class i transcription were examin...

Wilms' tumor is one of the most prevalent pediatric malignancies, ranking fourth in childhood cancer worldwide. TP53 is a critical tumor suppressor gene, which encodes a 53 kDa protein, p53. The p53 functions to protect against cancer by regulating cell cycle and apoptosis and maintaining DNA integrity. TP53 gene is highly polymorphic. Several TP53 gene polymorphisms have been considered to be ...

Wilms' tumor is a type of kidney cancer that affects young children. Although a number of Wilms' tumor samples have been collected through international trials, the mechanisms underlying its progression remain challenging to determine. Extensive studies have identified somatic mutations at several loci in Wilms' tumorigenesis, including WT1, catenin, Wilms' tumor gene on the X chromosome (WTX) ...

Wilms' tumor, or nephroblastoma, is the most common pediatric renal cancer. The tumors morphologically resemble embryonic kidneys with a disrupted architecture and are associated with undifferentiated metanephric precursors. Here, we discuss genetic and epigenetic findings in Wilms' tumor in the context of renal development. Many of the genes implicated in Wilms' tumorigenesis are involved in t...

Studies on the loss of heterozygosity (LOH) in human malignancies have shown that a number of different chromosomal regions associated with putative tumor suppressor genes may be involved in any one given tumor. We have carried out a similar study on Wilms' tumor using a range of DNA markers for a number of tumor suppressor regions. We tested a total of 44 Wilms' tumors including material from ...