Immunophenotypic identification and characterization of tumor cells and infiltrating cell populations in meningiomas.

Meningiomas are primary tumors of the central nervous system composed of both neoplastic and other infiltrating cells. We determined the cellular composition of 51 meningioma samples by multiparameter flow cytometric (MFC) immunophenotyping and investigated the potential relationship between mRNA and protein expression levels of neoplastic cells. For immunophenotypic, morphologic, and cytogenetic characterization of individual cell populations, a large panel of markers was used together with phagocytic/endocytic functional assays and MFC sorting. Overall, our results revealed coexistence of CD45(-) neoplastic cells and CD45(+) immune infiltrating cells in all meningiomas. Infiltrating cells included tissue macrophages, with an HLA-DR(+)CD14(+)CD45(+)CD68(+)CD16(-/+)CD33(-/+) phenotype and high phagocytic/endocytic activity, and a small proportion of cytotoxic lymphocytes (mostly T CD8(+) and natural killer cells). Tumor cells expressed multiple cell adhesion proteins, tetraspanins, HLA-I/HLA-DR molecules, complement regulatory proteins, cell surface ectoenzymes, and growth factor receptors. Noteworthy, the relationship between mRNA and protein levels was variable, depending on the proteins evaluated and the level of infiltration by immune cells. In summary, our results indicate that MFC immunophenotyping provides a reliable tool for the characterization of the patterns of protein expression of different cell populations coexisting in meningioma samples, with a more accurate measure of gene expression profiles of tumor cells at the functional/protein level than conventional mRNA microarray, independently of the degree of infiltration of the tumor by immune cells.

Analytic performance of the PENTRA 80 automated blood cell analyzer for the evaluation of normal and pathologic WBCs.

We evaluated performance of the ABX PENTRA 80 (ABX Diagnostics, Montpellier, France) hematology analyzer in enumerating the most frequent subsets of WBCs in peripheral blood, atypical lymphocytes (ALYs), and large immature cells (LICs) by comparing results with those obtained by manual microscopic counts, another hematology analyzer, and flow cytometric immunophenotyping. Identification and enumeration of neutrophils and lymphocytes with the PENTRA 80 showed high correlation with all 3 reference methods (R2 > or = 0.92 and R2 > or = 0.88, respectively); quantification of eosinophils showed good correlation with the other analyzer and flow cytometric immunophenotyping (R2 > or = 0.70); lower correlation coefficients were found for comparisons with conventional microscopy (R2 > or = 0.50). For monocytes, lower but acceptable correlation and agreement were found; marginal correlation was found for basophils. The PENTRA 80 also showed good performance in detecting LICs but was less effective for the identification of ALYs in relatively low frequencies in abnormal peripheral blood samples. We found good performance of the 5-part leukocyte differential analyses for the PENTRA 80, especially for enumeration of neutrophils, lymphocytes, eosinophils, and LICs.

Her-2/neu gene amplification in familial vs sporadic breast cancer. Impact on the behavior of the disease.

We compared the incidence of Her-2/neu amplification in patients with and without a family history of breast cancer and correlated gene status with clinicobiologic and prognostic features in sporadic and familial cases. Of 108 patients, 28.7% had gene amplification. Among 96 cases with family history information available, 28 had an affected first-degree relative. The gene was amplified more frequently in familial than in sporadic cases (13/28 [46%] vs 14/68 [21%]; P = .01). Among familial cases, amplification was associated with adverse clinicobiologic features (poorly differentiated tumors [P = .05], larger tumors [P = .05], more lymph nodes involved [P = .04], and DNA aneuploid [P = .02] and highly proliferative tumors [P = .005]), and the relapse (P = .02) and disease-related death (P = .05) rates were higher than in cases without amplification. Among sporadic cases, amplification was not associated with significantly different disease features, except for a higher incidence of DNA aneuploid tumors (P = .01), percentage of S-phase tumor cells (P = .006), and lower proportion of estrogen (P = .001) and progesterone (P = .002) receptors. Her-2/neu amplification was observed more frequently among patients with a family history of breast cancer, in whom it was associated with adverse clinicobiologic features and a worse clinical outcome.