The Journal of Pathology
The Journal of Pathology
5 years ago

Pancreatic undifferentiated carcinoma with osteoclast-like giant cells is genetically similar to, but clinically distinct from, conventional ductal adenocarcinoma

Laura D Wood, G Johan A Offerhaus, Paola Piccoli, Peter Chianchiano, Alessia Nottegar, Andrea Mafficini, Aldo Scarpa, Michaël Noë, Lodewijk AA Brosens, Ivana Cataldo, Paola Capelli, Yi Ning, Giuseppe Zamboni, Raluca Yonescu, Claudio Luchini, Giuseppe Malleo, Gemma Lionheart, Giulio Riva, Antonio Pea, Nicola Veronese
Undifferentiated carcinoma of the pancreas with osteoclast-like giant cells (UCOGC) is currently considered a morphologically and clinically distinct variant of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC). In this study, we report clinical and pathological features of a series of 22 UCOGCs, including the whole exome sequencing of eight UCOGCs. We observed that 60% of the UCOGCs contained a well-defined epithelial component and that patients with pure UCOGC had a significantly better prognosis than did those with an UCOGC with an associated epithelial neoplasm. The genetic alterations in UCOGC are strikingly similar to those known to drive conventional PDAC, including activating mutations in the oncogene KRAS and inactivating mutations in the tumor suppressor genes CDKN2A, TP53, and SMAD4. These results further support the classification of UCOGC as a PDAC variant and suggest that somatic mutations are not the determinants of the unique phenotype of UCOGC. Copyright © 2017 Pathological Society of Great Britain and Ireland. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Publisher URL: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/resolve/doi

DOI: 10.1002/path.4941

You might also like
Discover & Discuss Important Research

Keeping up-to-date with research can feel impossible, with papers being published faster than you'll ever be able to read them. That's where Researcher comes in: we're simplifying discovery and making important discussions happen. With over 19,000 sources, including peer-reviewed journals, preprints, blogs, universities, podcasts and Live events across 10 research areas, you'll never miss what's important to you. It's like social media, but better. Oh, and we should mention - it's free.

  • Download from Google Play
  • Download from App Store
  • Download from AppInChina

Researcher displays publicly available abstracts and doesn’t host any full article content. If the content is open access, we will direct clicks from the abstracts to the publisher website and display the PDF copy on our platform. Clicks to view the full text will be directed to the publisher website, where only users with subscriptions or access through their institution are able to view the full article.