A Case of Alveolar Rhabdomyosarcoma of the Nasal Cavity in an Adult: An Unusual Location.

Rhabdomyosarcoma is a common soft tissue tumor in children but rare in adults. Alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma represents a subtype of rhabdomyosarcoma, extremely rare in adults, especially within the nasal cavities. Therapeutic protocols for adults are often based on those used in pediatric cases. We present the case of a 56-year-old female patient with a history of breast cancer who developed alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma of the nasal cavity, stage III, managed initially with chemotherapy resulting in partial response. Subsequently, the patient underwent concomitant chemoradiotherapy. The clinical course was marked by local remission with metastatic progression after 18 months. Alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma is uncommon in adults, and its therapeutic management remains non-standardized. However, it is typically based on initial chemotherapy followed by local treatment. Despite therapeutic advances, the prognosis remains poor.

Pathologic and immunohistochemical prognostic markers in residual triple-negative breast cancer after neoadjuvant chemotherapy.

Background: The persistence of residual tumour after neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NAC) in localised triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is known to have a negative prognostic value. However, different degrees of expression of some immunohistochemical markers may correlate with different prognoses. Methods: The expression of biomarkers with a known prognostic value, i.e., cytokeratin 5/6 (CK5/6), androgen receptor (AR), epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) proliferation-related nuclear antigen Ki-67, human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2), protein 53 (p53), forkhead box protein 3 (FOXP3), and cluster differentiation 8 (CD8), was analysed by immunohistochemistry in 111 samples after NAC in non-metastatic TNBC patients addressed to Georges-François Leclerc Cancer Centre Dijon, France. Clinical and pathological variables were retrospectively collected. Cox regression was used to identify immunohistochemical (IHC) and clinicopathological predictors of event-free survival (EFS) (relapse or death). Results: Median age was 50.4 years (range 25.6-88.3), 55.9% (n = 62) were non-menopausal, 70 (63.1%) had stage IIA-IIB disease. NAC was mostly sequential anthracycline-taxanes (72.1%), and surgical intervention was principally conservative (51.3%). We found 65.7% ypT1, 47.2% lymph node involvement (ypN+), and 29.4% lymphovascular invasion (LVI). Most residual tumours were EGFR >110 (H-score) (60.5%, n = 66), AR ≥4% (53.2%, n = 58), p53-positive mutated (52.7%, n = 58), CD8 ≥26 (58.1%, n = 61), FOXP3 ≥7 (51.4%, n = 54), more than half in the stroma, and 52.3% (n = 58) HER2 score 0. After a median follow-up of 80.8 months, 48.6% had relapsed. Median EFS was 62.3 months (95% CI, 37.2-not reached (NR)). Factors independently associated with poor EFS were AR-low (p = 0.002), ypN+ (p < 0.001), and LVI (p = 0.001). Factors associated with lower overall survival (OS) were EGFR-low (p = 0.041), Ki-67 high (p = 0.024), and ypN+ (p < 0.001). Conclusion: Post-NAC residual disease in TNBC showed biomarkers specific to a basal-like subtype and markers of lymphocyte infiltration mostly present in the stroma. Prognostic markers for EFS were AR, LVI, and ypN and warrant further validation in a prognostic model.