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...

Regulation of the human telomerase reverse transcriptase (hTERT) gene is the primary determinant for telomerase enzyme activity, which is found in tumor cells but is largely absent from normal somatic cells. Recent studies have shown that Myc protein can transcriptionally activate the hTERT gene. However, little is known about the repression mechanism of the hTERT gene and telomerase enzyme. He...

PURPOSE A number of studies have indicated that the tumor proliferation marker MIB-1 and cell cycle inhibitor p27(Kip1) expression are of prognostic importance in a variety of cancers. The present study was performed to evaluate the prognostic value of these molecules in Wilms' tumors. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN MIB-1 and p27(Kip1) expressions were investigated by the means of immunohistochemical an...

BACKGROUND Pigmented lesions are common, yet they present diagnostic and therapeutic challenges. They range from nevi, which are clinically stable, to melanomas, which are notorious for distant metastasis and death. Both nevi and melanomas arise from melanocytes, which are neural crest derivatives, and melanocyte precursors migrate from the paraspinal area to their eventual location at the derm...

Most Wilms' tumors are of low stage, favorable histology, and have a high likelihood of cure with current multimodal therapy. Despite this, there remains a group of patients whose tumors recur for whom intensive salvage regimens result in survival of only 50%. Fitting a Cox proportional hazards model to microarray-based comparative genomic hybridization (aCGH) data on 68 Wilms' tumor samples, w...

A predisposition to the development of certain specific and familial cancers is associated with the inheritance of a single mutated gene. In the best-characterized cases, this primary mutation is a loss of function mutation consistent with viability but resulting in neoplastic change consequent to the acquisition of a second somatic mutation at the same locus. Such genes are referred to as tumo...