Soft Tissue Tumors: Soft Tissue Leiomyosarcoma

Clinics	The annual new cases in the U.S. are over 6,000. The five year survival rate after diagnosis is about 50%.
	Phylogenetic tree of leimyosarcomas and normal smooth muscle. Expression levels of 92 cDNA sequences from table III through V were analyzed for 11 leiomyosarcoma tissues. Experiment cluster analysis was performed using Michael Eisen's cluster tool and tree view. Data input and normalization of individual experiments were performed in GeneSpringTM 4.2 before imported into cluster tool. Red indicates high expression level, while green for low, black for no expression. The cutoff expression level for non-expressor was set at 200 arbitary units. Pathological grade (G) for each tumor is indicated, so is metastasis (r) if it is present.
Genes	Soft tissue leiomyosarcoma was classified based on salient gene expression characteristics. Three types of leiomyosarcoma were proposed: 1) "Simplification" of gene expression in leiomyosarcoma, characterized by dramatic down regulation of large number of genes; 2) "Inflammation related" gene expression, characterized by the prominent presence of lymphocyte specific genes in the analysis; and 3) "neural" gene expression, characterized by neuronal gene expression. Among these subtypes, simplification gene expression is associated with the poorest prognosis, while inflammation related one the best.
Prognosis	Local recurrent tumor, positive surgical margins, >50 years age, >20 mitoses per high power field are adversely associated with survival.

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