Following the successful introduction of the receptor tyrosine kinase inhibitors (TKI) as the mainstay for the treatment of advanced and metastatic gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST), GIST has received a special attention in the recent literature. This resulted in major achievements on the surgical pathology diagnosis and improved our understanding of the molecular biology of the disease. Av...

Cancer immunosurveillance relies on effector/memory tumor-infiltrating CD8(+) T cells with a T-helper cell 1 (TH1) profile. Evidence for a natural killer (NK) cell-based control of human malignancies is still largely missing. The KIT tyrosine kinase inhibitor imatinib mesylate markedly prolongs the survival of patients with gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST) by direct effects on tumor cells...

In the treatment of recurrent or metastatic gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST), good prognoses may not be expected by surgery alone. Recently, imatinib has been applied for the treatment of GISTs, resulting in improved patient survival. However, long-term success is limited due to the development of resistance. Herein, we report two cases of long-surviving patients with recurrent GIST after...

Sorafenib has substantial clinical activity as thirdor fourth-line treatment of imatiniband sunitinibresistant gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST). Because sorafenib targets both angiogenesis-related kinases (VEGFR) and the pathogenetic kinases found in GIST (KIT or PDGFRA), the molecular basis for sorafenib efficacy in this setting remains unknown. We sought to determine the spectrum of act...

GROβ (CXCL2) is a chemokine produced by endotoxin-treated macrophages that mediates inflammation and tumor development. However, little is known about GROβ expression in gastrointestinal stromal tumors (GIST) or the relationship between GROβ expression and clinical attributes of GIST. GROβ expression was examined via immunohistochemical staining of 173 GIST samples using tissue microarray. The ...

UNLABELLED Gastrointestinal stromal tumor (GIST), originating from the interstitial cells of Cajal (ICC), is characterized by frequent activating mutations of the KIT receptor tyrosine kinase. Despite the clinical success of imatinib, which targets KIT, most patients with advanced GIST develop resistance and eventually die of the disease. The ETS family transcription factor ETV1 is a master reg...

A subset of GISTs lack mutations in the KIT/PDGFRA or RAS pathways and yet retain an intact succinate dehydrogensase (SDH) complex. We propose that these KIT/PDGFRA/SDH/RAS-P WT GIST tumors be designated as quadruple wild-type (WT) GIST. Further molecular and clinicophatological characterization of quadruple WT GIST will help to determine their prognosis as well as assist in the optimization of...