Objective To review the diagnosis and treatment of basal cell carcinoma of the scrorum. Methods Clinical data of 7 patients with basal cell carcinoma of the scrotum were analyzed retrospectively. The mean age of the patients was 66 years. The most common presenting symptom was a plaque or nodular lesion with pruritis on the scrotum. The lesions ranged from 1.5 cm to 4.5 cm in diameter. Five of the 7 patients had a history of misdiagnosis. The diagnosis was established by biopsy of the lesion in all the patients. All of the 7 patients had no distant metastasis at the time of diagnosis and were treated by wide surgical resection.Results Histopathologic examination of the specimens confirmed the negative surgical margins in all cases.The most common histological feature was lobules, columns, bands and cords of basaloid cells associated with a surrounding loose fibromucinous stroma.One patient developed left inguinal lymph node metastasis at 21 months postoperatively,and was treated by bilateral inguinal lymph node dissection.The patient was free of cancer for 36 months after that. Another patient developed lung metastasis 48 months after the first operation.He was treated by systemic chemotherapy with cyclophosph amide, epirubicin and cisplatin for 6 cycles and obtained complete remission.This patient was free of cancer for 13 months after the chemotherapy.The remaining 5 patients were all free of cancer after the operation. Conclusions Basal cell carcinoma of the scrotum is rare.Wide surgical resection alone is usually considered to be curative. Because of its potential of metastasis, long-term followup is indicated for this disease.

'Divide and conquer' has been the guiding strategy for the study of protein structure and function. Proteins are divided into domains with each domain having a canonical structural definition depending on its type. In this review, we push forward with the interesting observation that many domains have regions outside of their canonical definition that affect their structure and function; we call these regions 'extensions'. We focus on the highly abundant PDZ (PSD-95, DLG1 and ZO-1) domain. Using bioinformatics, we find that many PDZ domains have potential extensions and we developed an openly-accessible website to display our results ( http://bcz102.ust.hk/pdzex/ ). We propose, using well-studied PDZ domains as illustrative examples, that the roles of PDZ extensions can be classified into at least four categories: 1) protein dynamics-based modulation of target binding affinity, 2) provision of binding sites for macro-molecular assembly, 3) structural integration of multi-domain modules, and 4) expansion of the target ligand-binding pocket. Our review highlights the potential structural and functional importance of domain extensions, highlighting the significance of looking beyond the canonical boundaries of protein domains in general.
Animals ; Binding Sites ; Humans ; Ligands ; PDZ Domains ; Protein Binding ; Protein Multimerization ; Proteins ; chemistry

Objective To investigate the relationship of obesity and vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF)and the clinicopathological characteristics and prognosis of breast cancer.Methods From Jan.2013 to Dec.2015,147 breast cancer patients were treated at the Department of Breast Surgery in Jiangsu University Affiliated People's Hospital.The clinical factors such as BMI,clinicopathological data and survival prognosis were collected.The chi-square test was used to analyze the association between factors and obesity.Log-rank test and COX regression analysis were performed to make univariate and multivariate analysis.The Oncomine and Kaplan Meier plotter were employed to assess the expression of VEGF in breast cancer and its association with survival prognosis of breast cancer patients.Results The median follow-up time was 40 (ranging from 12 to 58) months.Obesity was associated with tumor size(x2=11.009,P=0.001),and there was no significant correlation between axillary lymph node status,hormone receptor and Her-2 expression.The results of single factor analysis suggested that obesity and axillary lymph node status significantly affected the breast cancer patients OS (P=0.035,P=0.038)and RFS (P=0.035,P=0.036)).Cox multivariate regression analysis results suggested that obesity could be considered as an independent prognostic factor of breast cancer:P=0.051,HR=3.849 (95％ CI:0.995-14.895);Oncomine database analysis found that VEGF was relatively high in breast cancer tissue compared to that in adjacent tissues.Kaplan Meier plotter analysis results showed better overall survival (OS)and recurrence free survival (RFS)in patients with low expression of VEGF in breast cancer tissues.Conclusions Obesity is an adverse prognostic factor in breast cancer patients,and may be associated with elevated VEGF.Weight control may improve the prognosis of breast cancer patients.