This Week in Experimental and Molecular Pathology

Researchers at the University of Belgrade in Serbia examined genomic instability and p53 changes in anaplastic astrocytoma and primary glioblastoma patients. As they report in Experimental and Molecular Pathology, they used arbitrarily primed PCR to detect both chromosomal instability and the accumulation of mutations in tumors and found that about 40 percent of tumors had p53 alterations while 63 percent had high levels of genomic instability. "Our results, although limited by a relatively small set of samples, suggest that high overall level of genomic instability is one of the main features of anaplastic astrocytomas and primary glioblastomas. Alterations of p53, although frequently present, did not show any association with the level of genomic instability, but were associated with anaplastic astrocytomas," the researchers write.

Also in Experimental and Molecular Pathology, researchers led by Devendra Agrawal from the Creighton University School of Medicine write that high levels of vitamin D receptors in mucosa of people with Barrett's Esophagus "may indicate an increased sensitivity of this tissue to endogenous or therapeutic effects of Vitamin D."