Background: Inter-observer and intra-observer variation in histologic tumor grading are well documented. To determine whether histologic disorderliness in the arrangement of tumor cells may serve as an objective criterion for grading, we tested the hypothesis the degree of disorderliness is related to the degree of tumor differentiation on which tumor grading is primarily based.
Methods: Borrowing from the statistical thermodynamic definition of entropy, we defined a novel mathematical formula to compute the relative degree of histologic disorderliness of tumor cells. We then analyzed a total of 51 photomicrographs of normal colorectal mucosa and colorectal adenocarcinoma with varying degrees of differentiation using our formula.
Results: A one-way analysis of variance followed by post hoc pairwise comparisons using Bonferroni correction indicated that the mean disorderliness score was the lowest for the normal colorectal mucosa and increased with decreasing tumor differentiation.
Conclusions: Disorderliness, a pathologic feature of malignant tumors that originate from highly organized structures is useful as an objective tumor grading proxy in the field of digital pathology.
Background: The pathogenesis of radiation-induced sarcomas (RISs) is not well known. In RIS, TP53 mutations are frequent, but little is known about Mdm2-p53 interaction, which is a recent therapeutic target of sarcomas.
Methods: We studied the immunohistochemical expression of Mdm2 and p53 of 8 RISs. The intervals between radiation therapy and diagnosis of secondary sarcomas ranged from 3 to 17 years.
Results: Mdm2 expression was more common in de novo sarcomas than RISs (75% vs 37.5%), and p53 expression was more common in RISs than in de novo cases (75% vs 37.5%). While half of the RISs were Mdm2(-)/p53(+), none of de novo cases showed such combination; while half of de novo sarcomas were Mdm2(+)/p53(-), which are a candidate group of Mdm2 inhibitors, only 1 RIS showed such a combination. Variable immunoprofiles observed in both groups did not correlate with tumor types, except that all of 2 myxofibrosarcomas were Mdm2(+)/p53(+).
Conclusions: In conclusion, we speculated that both radiation-induced and de novo sarcomagenesis are not due to a unique genetic mechanism. Mdm2-expression without p53 overexpression in 1 case of RIS decreases the future possibility of applying Mdm2 inhibitors on a subset of these difficult tumors.