In this issue

Gastric carcinoma is one of the most frequently occurring cancers worldwide and, until recently, was the second leading cause of cancer death. It is most prevalent in Asia, including China and Japan, in South America and in Eastern Europe. There are two major variants, defined histologically either by cohesive neoplastic cells forming glandlike tubular structures (intestinal type) or by lack of cohesion and the individual tumor cells infiltrate and thicken the stomach wall without forming a discrete mass (diffuse type). These two tumors show distinct demographics and genetic pathways. The prognosis of gastric cancer is very poor and there is an urgent need to further identify molecular markers for clinical use and to better understand its pathogenesis. In this issue (pages 393–398), Chen and colleagues have identified p150, the largest subunit of eukaryotic translation initiation factor, as a prognostic factor for gastric cancer. The authors studied 102 cases of gastric carcinomas for p150 expression. They found that 85% of gastric cancers stained positively for p150 by immunohistochemistry. In 14 tumors analyzed by western blotting, p150 was found to be overexpressed. This overexpression correlated closely with clinicopathological parameters: high expression was correlated with well-differentiated carcinomas, at early invasive stages, without metastasis and in early TNM stages. A good correlation between high p150 expression and tumor apoptosis was also observed. These observations suggest that p150 may be a new early marker for gastric carcinoma as previously shown for esophagus and cervix carcinoma. Tea is a tasty and inexpensive remedy and the second most widely consumed beverage in the world. In Southern China green tea is grown locally and drunk by a large part of the population. Typically, dried tea leaves are brewed in a large cup using hot water without sugar or milk. This simple and standard form of preparation makes tea consumption in the area relatively easy to quantify by counting the number of cups and the frequency of brewing a new batch of tea. Tea is also a natural source of antioxidants with potent anticarcinogenic properties. Previous studies have shown that polyphenolic compounds present in green tea can inhibit proliferation and transformation of tumor cells possibly through a mechanism involving the telomerase enzyme. Two studies showed that theanine, a glutamate derivative, in tea can enhance the antitumor activity of adriamycin and doxorubicin in the treatment of ovarian sarcoma. Zhang and colleagues (pages 465–469) have now added a novel benefit of tea consumption to the list. They found a remarkable increase in survival in ovarian cancer patients who drank high amounts of green tea. Survival time curves by post-diagnosis tea consumption in ovarian cancer patients in Southern China. Ovarian cancer is among the gynecological malignancies with the poorest survival chances because of late diagnosis and frequent recurrence. This prospective study examined the tea drinking habits of 254 women after the diagnosis of ovarian cancer in the Zhejian province in Southern China. The survival difference between tea drinkers and non-drinkers was highly significant (p < 0.001). While 81 (77.9%) of 104 tea drinkers survived to the time of interview, only 67 (47.9%) of 140 non-drinkers were still alive. In addition, the frequency and quantity of green tea consumption was relevant for prognosis. The high number of non-drinkers can be explained by the fact that some women deliberately stopped drinking green tea after the diagnosis to avoid interference with effects of Chinese herbal medicine. Thyroid gland malignancies carry a favorable prognosis when presenting a differentiated phenotype. Anaplastic thyroid carcinoma, in contrast, is one of the most aggressive malignancies known and is considered fatal, with a median survival of 6 months. None of the current therapies, including radiotherapy and chemotherapy, provide any improvement in survival and there is therefore a great need for new treatments. Oncolytic herpes simplex viruses (HSV) have potent antitumor effects against a variety of human cancers in animal models, including brain, breast, colorectal, prostate and head-and-neck cancers. On pages 525–532, Yu and colleagues report on the successful use of a replication-competent, attenuated, oncolytic HSV against 7 different thyroid cancer cell lines (papillary, follicular, medullary and anaplastic). They observed that only the follicular cell line did not respond to HSV infection and cell lysis. All other cell lines were infected and showed >88% cell death to day 4. The effectiveness of this therapy was most dramatically illustrated by inoculation of flank tumors in athymic nude mice by the virus. The papillary cell line tumors regressed following a single dose, while most of the other thyroid cell line tumors showed partial response after a single dose and significant improvement after 3 serial doses. These preliminary observations suggest that herpes oncolytic therapy may be effective for the treatment of poorly differentiated thyroid carcinoma and warrants further exploration. Contaminations of polio vaccines with simian virus 40 (SV40) have been blamed as a cause for human cancers such as mesotheliomas, tumors of the central nervous system and non-Hodgkin lymphomas. Most supporting evidence comes from studies involving PCR amplification of viral sequences, a method classically prone to false interpretation due to contaminations. In addition, tumor cells and invading mononuclear phagocytes, which in some studies were identified as the carriers of the SV40 genome, could not be distinguished from each other. French and Canadian scientists report now that they did not find any evidence for SV40 infection in nearly 500 tumor samples from patients with non-Hodgkin's lymphomas or Hodgkin's lymphomas (Brousset et al., pages 533–535). Using a highly sensitive immunohistochemistry method (CSA method) they did not detect one single tumor cell staining positive for the SV40 large T antigen. Although they cannot exclude that extremely low levels of large T antigen might be present in the tumor samples, the authors see their findings as a strong indication that SV40 is not implicated in human lymphomagenesis.

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