Primary Malignant Melanoma of the Urethra: A Rare Finding.

Primary urinary tract metastatic melanoma is an extremely rare cancer involving the urinary tract. In the majority of melanomas, skin melanocytes can become damaged by ultraviolet radiation and cause melanoma. However, in rare cases, melanocytes in mucosal tissue can develop into melanoma, which can be challenging to diagnose and treat. This case report describes managing and treating a patient with an extremely rare primary cancer finding. We describe the case of a patient who was diagnosed with primary metastatic melanoma of the urinary tract following an extensive and detailed diagnostic period of 2.5 months. After review by an interdisciplinary tumor board and a shared decision-making process with the patient, he agreed to immunotherapy with ipilimumab and nivolumab. The patient survived nearly five months after the initiation of treatment. The cause of death was challenging to determine due to it being unwitnessed; however, it is suspected to be cardiovascular-related, owing to a history of severe cardiovascular disease and an acute stress event prior to death.

A Rare Case of Human Papillomavirus-associated High-grade Neuroendocrine Carcinoma of the Hypopharynx.

We present a case of primary small cell carcinoma of the hypopharynx (SCCH), with a rare association with human papillomavirus (HPV). A comparison is made to 11 previously known, well-documented cases of SCCH with a review of the literature concerning SCCH. Our patient's age of 23 years is the lowest among all previously reported cases, with an age range of 35-75. HPV association with SCCH is a rare new entity and eight HPV subtypes were identified in our case by ribonucleic acid (RNA) in-situ hybridization. The important common features among the previously reported 11 cases and our case include: (a) piriform sinus of the hypopharynx as the primary site in all cases, (b) a majority of patients presented with dysphagia and a neck mass, and (c) most patients had locoregional involvement at the time of presentation as opposed to distant metastasis. HPV-associated SCCH is extremely rare, with potentially aggressive clinical behavior, and needs much more research to further elucidate both the diagnostic and therapeutic approaches.

Extracting the Density of States of Copper Phthalocyanine at the SiO2 Interface with Electronic Sum Frequency Generation.

Organic semiconductors (OSCs) constitute an attractive platform for optoelectronics design due to the ease of their processability and chemically tunable properties. Incorporating OSCs into electrical circuits requires forming junctions between them and other materials, yet the change in dielectric properties about these junctions can strongly perturb the electronic structure of the OSC. Here we adapt an interface-selective optical technique, electronic sum frequency generation (ESFG), to the study of a model OSC thin-film system, copper phthalocyanine (CuPc) deposited on SiO2. We find that by modeling the thickness dependence of our measured spectra, we can identify changes in CuPc's electronic density of states at both its buried interface with SiO2 and air-exposed surface. Our work demonstrates that ESFG can be used to noninvasively probe the interfacial electronic structure of optically thick OSC films, indicating that it can be used for the study of OSC-based optoelectronics in situ.