The increasing use of neoadjuvant therapy for breast cancer has led to the development of early surrogate markers of response. Positron emission tomography (PET) allows noninvasive study of fundamental biologic processes in the tumor; furthermore, PET provides various markers to assess tumor response early in the course of therapy. Numerous studies have shown that changes in tumor glucose metab...

There has long been a pressing clinical need to identify prognostic and predictive factors for patients with breast cancer. Although numerous candidate biological and molecular markers have been identified during the last two decades, traditional factors such as lymph node status, tumor size, histologic type, histologic grade, and hormone receptor status remain the most useful indicators of pro...

Biologics have greatly improved the management of rheumatoid arthritis (RA), demonstrating efficacy and safety in alleviating symptoms, inhibiting bone erosion, and preventing loss of function. Unmet therapeutic needs in RA remain; however, further advances require an understanding of issues left unaddressed under the current treatment paradigm. Most biologic-naïve and biologic-pretreated patie...

The diagnosis and classification of non-Hodgkin lymphoma has undergone substantial change during the last 20 years. We have moved from a purely morphologically driven classification system to one in which immunophenotype and molecular genetic features are now part of the disease definitions. This has permitted us to define new entities such as mantle cell lymphoma, anaplastic large cell lymphom...

Hodgkin lymphoma (HL) accounts for about 10% of all childhood cancers. Five-year survival rates with modern therapies are now approaching >90-95% as a consequence of its significant sensitivity to both chemotherapy and radiation. The current challenge is to determine how much therapy is needed to improve survival and how to adapt treatment to the patient to prevent these long term toxicities. T...

Background: Fine-needle aspiration of breast cancer often provides moderate cellular material that is representative of the tumors. These samples can be used not only for cytological diagnosis but also to obtain information on the prognosis and likely response to therapy by using immunohistochemical staining studies. Methods: We assessed the degree of correlation between prognostic biologic ma...