Biology of Thymic Tumors

Biological Analysis of a Series of Thymoma and Thymic Carcinoma: Genetic Aberrations and Potential Therapy Targets.

This is a retrospective analysis of biological characteristics of thymoma and thymic carcinoma patients.

The aim of the present study is to investigated the genetic alterations in tumor samples of a series of all WHO-defined subtypes of thymoma patients using high resolution microarray- comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) followed by hierarchical cluster analyses of the data to identify specific patterns of genetic aberrations and genes associated with each subtype. Moreover, tumor samples will be also investigated for some specific potential therapy targets by immunoistichemistry, mutation analysis, and fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) analysis. All these biological data will be correlated with clinical patients characteristics and survival data.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Availability of tumor tissue and patients with thymoma and thymic carcinoma

Exclusion Criteria:

• NON Availability of tumor tissue and patients with thymoma and thymic carcinoma