Cardiac tumors invading the right ventricle; Aggressive Surgical Management with backup mechanical circulatory support if necessary.

BACKGROUND: Primary cardiac tumors are exceedingly rare. Amongst the malignant types, sarcomas are the most frequently encountered. Treatment includes attempted aggressive surgical resection as the only curative option. We report our experience. METHODS: During the last five years, six patients presented at our institution with complex cardiac tumors with different underlying diagnoses and were at different stages of their disease. RESULTS: 6 patients with median age of 30-years-old underwent surgery in our centre. 3 patients had undergone debulking prior to surgery at our institution. In all patients, the tumor involved the right ventricle. One patient had biventricular involvement, the septum was involved in 4 patients, 2 patients had extracardiac growth, one invading both great vessels, one involving the pericardium and the hilar structures on the right side. Complete resection was achieved in 4 cases, 3 with successful resection-reconstruction, one with cardiectomy and implantation of a total artificial heart. 5 patients are currently alive, 4 free of recurrence. CONCLUSIONS: Complete radical surgery is the only curative treatment for patients suffering from cardiac tumors. The availability of mechanical circulatory support allows for a more radical surgical approach even including total cardiectomy, possibly resulting in a significant increase in R0 resections.

Clinically actionable mutation profiles in patients with cancer identified by whole-genome sequencing.

Next-generation sequencing (NGS) efforts have established catalogs of mutations relevant to cancer development. However, the clinical utility of this information remains largely unexplored. Here, we present the results of the first eight patients recruited into a clinical whole-genome sequencing (WGS) program in the United Kingdom. We performed PCR-free WGS of fresh frozen tumors and germline DNA at 75× and 30×, respectively, using the HiSeq2500 HTv4. Subtracted tumor VCFs and paired germlines were subjected to comprehensive analysis of coding and noncoding regions, integration of germline with somatically acquired variants, and global mutation signatures and pathway analyses. Results were classified into tiers and presented to a multidisciplinary tumor board. WGS results helped to clarify an uncertain histopathological diagnosis in one case, led to informed or supported prognosis in two cases, leading to de-escalation of therapy in one, and indicated potential treatments in all eight. Overall 26 different tier 1 potentially clinically actionable findings were identified using WGS compared with six SNVs/indels using routine targeted NGS. These initial results demonstrate the potential of WGS to inform future diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment choice in cancer and justify the systematic evaluation of the clinical utility of WGS in larger cohorts of patients with cancer.

The ENCCA-WP7/EuroSarc/EEC/PROVABES/EURAMOS 3rd European Bone Sarcoma Networking Meeting/Joint Workshop of EU Bone Sarcoma Translational Research Networks; Vienna, Austria, September 24-25, 2015. Workshop Report.

This report summarizes the results of the 3rd Joint ENCCA-WP7, EuroSarc, EEC, PROVABES, and EURAMOS European Bone Sarcoma Network Meeting, which was held at the Children's Cancer Research Institute in Vienna, Austria on September 24-25, 2015. The joint bone sarcoma network meetings bring together European bone sarcoma researchers to present and discuss current knowledge on bone sarcoma biology, genetics, immunology, as well as results from preclinical investigations and clinical trials, to generate novel hypotheses for collaborative biological and clinical investigations. The ultimate goal is to further improve therapy and outcome in patients with bone sarcomas.

Workshop Report on the European Bone Sarcoma Networking Meeting: Integration of Clinical Trials with Tumor Biology.

A key workshop was held in The Netherlands in June 2011, hosted by several European bone sarcoma networks and with a broad range of stakeholders from Europe and Australia. The purpose of the meeting was to identify the strengths and weaknesses in current clinical trials for bone sarcomas and to make recommendations as to how to accelerate progress in this field. Two areas of particular interest were discussed. First, all participants agreed upon the importance of tumor biology to understanding clinical responses for all types of bone sarcoma. Various barriers to biobanking tumor and germline specimens were canvassed and are outlined in this paper. Second, there was consideration of the particular challenges of dealing with adolescent and young adult cancers, exemplified by bone sarcomas. Participants recommended greater engagement of both pediatric and adult sarcoma trial organizations to address this issue. Specific opportunities were identified to develop biological sub-studies within osteosarcoma, focused on understanding germ line risk and pharmacogenomics defining toxicity and biological responses. In Ewing sarcoma, it was harder to define opportunities for biological insights. There was agreement that the results for insulin-like growth factor pathway inhibition in Ewing family tumors were disappointing, but represented a clear indication of the need for companion biologic studies to develop predictive biomarkers. The meeting ended with broad commitment to working together to make progress in this rare but important subgroup of cancers.

Segmentation of cell clumps for quantitative analysis.

The increasing amounts of microscopy data generated in cell biology requires the development of automated tools for the quantitative analysis of images. Clumps of cells are difficult to segment due to the frequent lack of clear boundaries between cells and are often ignored, but communication between cells is an intrinsic part of the response of cells to their environment. In addition cells often show a large variation in their responses, even within a clump, and an accurate segmentation is therefore vital to prevent the unwanted averaging of measurements over multiple cells. Here we present a method for segmenting clumps of cells by using a multi-scale ridge filter to enhance unclear boundaries. A multi-phase level set method incorporating a region competition term is used to identify a boundary for each cell based on the ridge filter response.