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This Week in Pathology

July 19, 2012

In Pathology, New Zealand researchers say that increased expression of the mitochondrial Tu translation elongation factor, or TUFM, may be a prognostic marker in colorectal cancer. They analyzed TUFM protein expression in 123 colorectal cancer cases and found that "increased expression of TUFM in CRC was associated with a significantly poorer cancer specific survival," though it was not associated with the stage of the disease.

Researchers led by Kyoung-Mee Kim at Sungkyunkwan University School of Medicine in Seoul, Korea, present their mutational screening of gastrointestinal stromal tumors using a mass spectrometry-based panel of multiplex assays in the journal Pathology. The researchers screened 22 GIST tumor samples for 390 mutations in 30 genes and compared those findings to those from Sanger sequencing. The panel could detect 48 percent of the KIT and 72 percent of the PDGFRA mutations in the Catalogue of Somatic Mutations in Cancer database, the researchers write. However, while the panel could detect 100 percent of the missense mutations found in KIT, it could only detect 17 percent of the deletion mutations. "In conclusion, mutations of oncogenes other than KIT or PDGFRA are rare among Korean GISTs. The MassARRAY approach alone is not sufficient to screen deletion mutations in GISTs," the researchers add.