Sacral chordoma is a rare spine tumor with a high recurrence rate even after optimal therapy. Previous studies have demonstrated that the PI3K/AKT pathway plays a pivotal role in chordoma, and high expression of pAKT is associated with poor prognosis. Recently, PHLPP was recognized to be a tumor suppressor that targets AKT. We analyzed the expression of PHLPP1 and AKT2 in 37 chordoma samples an...

Chordomas are rare, low to intermediate grade malignant bone tumors of the axial skeleton. Current treatment options are limited to surgical procedures, as chordomas are largely resistant to conventional radiation and chemotherapy. Cell lines are valuable tools for exploring molecular mechan-isms involved in tumorigenesis and they have a fundamental impact on the development of new anticancer a...

The molecular basis of chordoma is still poorly understood, particularly with respect to differentially expressed genes involved in the primary origin of chordoma. In this study, therefore, we compared the transcriptional expression profile of one sacral chordoma recurrence, two chordoma cell lines (U-CH1 and U-CH2) and one chondrosarcoma cell line (U-CS2) with vertebral disc using a high-densi...

Immortal tumor cell lines are an important model system for cancer research, however, misidentification and cross-contamination of cell lines are a common problem. Seven chordoma cell lines are reported in the literature, but none has been characterized in detail. We analyzed gene expression patterns and genomic copy number variations in five putative chordoma cell lines (U-CH1, CCL3, CCL4, GB6...

Chordoma is a rare malignant neoplasm arising from remnants of notochordal cells along the spinal axis. It occurs along the spinal axis with most tumors arising in the sacrococcygeal and sphenooccipital regions, with the remaining tumors arising along the cervical, thoracic, and lumbar spine. As the chordoma has been considered primarily a local disease associated with a high incidence of local...

Chordoma is a rare, slow-growing but locally aggressive malignant tumour for which little improvement in outcome has been reported. The management of chordoma is controversial and challenging because of their location and often large size at presentation. We report the case of a 57 year old male with radicular compression associated with an L3 chordoma that was successfully treated with a wide ...

A chordoma which occurs as a primary tumour outside the axial skeleton is known as an extra-axial chordoma, parachordoma or chordoma periphericum. It is extremely rare and therefore survival, recurrence and the rates of metastasis are not known. Whilst few recurrences have been described, the extra-axial chordoma has the potential for late recurrence at up to 12 years. Metastases are even less ...

A major obstacle in the effective treatment of chordoma is that there are no identifiable biomarkers capable of predicting prognosis. Recent research has indicated that signal transducers and activators of transcription (Stat3) may be an important prognostic marker in some cancers, but its role in chordoma tumors has not been elucidated. In this study, the expression of Stat3 was evaluated in c...

Chordoma is a rare bone tumor with high recurrence rate, but the mechanism of its development is unclear. Long non-coding RNAs(lncRNAs) are recently revealed to be regulators in a variety of biological processed by targeting on mRNA transcription. Their expression profile and function in chordoma have not been investigated yet. In this study, we firstly performed the comprehensive analysis of t...

Chordomas are rare malignant tumors that originate from the notochord remnants and occur in the skull base, spine and sacrum. Due to a very limited understanding of the molecular pathogenesis of chordoma, there are no adjuvant and molecular therapies besides surgical resection and radiation therapy. microRNAs (miRNAs) are small noncoding regulatory RNA molecules with critical roles in cancer. T...