Open AccessCancer of Unknown Primary: Opportunities and Challenges
Author(s) -
L K Rajeev,
Vikas Asati,
K N Lokesh,
A H Rudresh,
Suresh Babu,
Linu Abraham Jacob,
Lokanatha Dasappa,
G. Suresh Babu,
K C Lakshmaiah
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
indian journal of medical and paediatric oncology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.229
H-Index - 22
eISSN - 0975-2129
pISSN - 0971-5851
DOI - 10.4103/ijmpo.ijmpo_91_17
Subject(s) - medicine , pathological , immunohistochemistry , cancer , gene expression profiling , profiling (computer programming) , primary tumor , pathology , oncology , bioinformatics , gene , gene expression , metastasis , biology , genetics , computer science , operating system
Cancer of unknown primary (CUP) is defined as histologically proven metastatic tumors whose primary site cannot be identified during pretreatment evaluation. Among all malignancies, 3%–5% remained as CUP even after the extensive radiological and pathological workup. Immunohistochemistry and molecular gene expression tumor profiling are being utilized to predict the tissue of origin. Unfortunately, the survival of these patients remains poor (6–9 months) except in 20% of patients who belong to a favorable subset (12–36 months). There is a need to understand the basic biology and to identify the molecular pathways which can be targeted with small molecules. This article reviews our current approach as well as treatment evolution occurred in the past three decades.