BACKGROUND Testicular tumors constitute a rare type of cancer affecting adolescents and young adults with recent reports confirming an increase in incidence worldwide. The purpose of this study was to estimate the epidemiological characteristics and histological subtypes of testicular tumors in the Lebanese population according to the WHO classification of testicular and paratesticular tumors. ...

Sclerosing stromal tumor of the ovary is a rare, benign ovarian tumor, seen primarily in young women. We report a 3-year-old girl who presented with a palpable lower abdominal mass. Computed Tomography (CT) study revealed a huge pelvic mass with an enhancement pattern typical of ovarian sclerosing stromal tumor. The diagnosis was confirmed by pathology examination of the surgically resected tum...

We show with transgenic mice that targeted overexpression of glial cell line-derived neurotrophic factor (GDNF) in undifferentiated spermatogonia promotes malignant testicular tumors, which express germ-cell markers. The tumors are invasive and contain aneuploid cells, but no distant metastases have been found. By several histological, molecular, and histochemical characteristics, the GDNF-indu...

objective(s):mesenchymal stem cells (mscs) derived from wharton’s jelly (wj-mscs) are now much more appealing for cell-based infertility therapy. hence, wj-mscs differentiation toward germ layer cells for cell therapy purposes is currently under intensive study. materials and methods: mscs were isolated from human wharton’s jelly and treated with bmp4, retinoic acid (ra) or co-cultured on human...

Studies of human germ cell development are limited in large part by inaccessibility of germ cells during development. Moreover, although several studies have reported differentiation of mouse and human germ cells from pluripotent stem cells (PSCs) in vitro, differentiation of human germ cells from PSCs in vivo has not been reported. Here, we tested whether mRNA reprogramming in combination with...

Although front-line chemotherapy cures most men with testicular germ cell tumors, salvage therapy is still important in a small but significant minority. Second-line conventional-dose or high-dose chemotherapy with stem cell rescue may cure 25%-50% of patients. New chemotherapeutic agents, including the taxanes gemcitabine and oxaliplatin, have added to the therapeutic armamentarium. Salvage su...

Over the past decade, accumulating evidence has implicated the phenomenon of epigenetic dysregulation in a variety of cancers (Biermann and Steger, 2007). Defined as the heritable changes in gene function that are not attributable to changes in DNA sequence, epigenetics involve biochemical modifications to DNA regulatory elements as well as to the tail regions of histone proteins (Maekawa and W...

At the University of Southern California (USC), it is our practice to begin by estimating the likelihood of a durable remission based on individual characteristics. Factors including pure seminoma, prior complete response (CR) to cisplatin therapy, low-volume metastases, and a testicular primary predict for cure with standard-dose salvage[1-4] and may help clinicians identify patients for whom ...

Cancers arising from the stromal and germ cell layers of the ovary are rare, heterogeneous, difficult to study, and require specialized multidisciplinary management. We present a clinically relevant review of the literature of these malignancies, with particular emphasis on the more typical presentations. These tumors more commonly present in younger patients and have a high cure rate. They are...