Inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor of the esophagus.

Chen Y, Tang Y, Li H, Zhang P, Cui Y, Zhang H, Deslauriers J.

Department of Thoracic Surgery, First Hospital of Jilin University, Jilin, People's Republic of China.

Inflammatory myofibroblastic tumors are regarded as intermediate-grade tumors with a potential for

recurrence. Although these lesions have been found in nearly every anatomic location, there are few

documented cases of esophageal localization. The rare case reported here concerns a 55-year-old woman

with an extremely large inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor of the esophagus; the tumor was 20 cm in

length and 6 cm in diameter. Wide surgical excision was performed. Histopathologic and

immunohistochemical analyses confirmed the diagnosis of an inflammatory myofibroblastic tumor. There

was no recurrence or tumor metastasis 6 months after the operation. 2010 The Society of Thoracic

Surgeons. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

PMID: 20103355 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

Intestinal epithelial wound healing assay in an epithelial-mesenchymal co-culture system.

Seltana A, Basora N, Beaulieu JF.

CIHR Team on the Digestive Epithelium, Département d'anatomie et de biologie cellulaire, Faculté de

médecine et des sciences de la santé, Université de Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, QC, Canada.

Rapid and efficient healing of epithelial damage is critical to the functional integrity of the small intestine.

Epithelial repair is a complex process that has largely been studied in cultured epithelium but to a much

lesser extent in mucosa. We describe a novel method for the study of wound healing using a co-culture

system that combined an intestinal epithelial Caco-2/15 cell monolayer cultured on top of human intestinal

myofibroblasts, which together formed a basement membrane-like structure that contained many of the

major components found at the epithelial-mesenchymal interface in the human intestine. To investigate the

mechanism of restitution, small lesions were generated in epithelial cell monolayers on plastic or in co-

cultures without disturbing the underlying mesenchymal layer. Monitoring of wound healing showed that

repair was more efficient in Caco-2/15-myofibroblast co-cultures than in Caco-2/15 monolayers and

involved the deposition of basement membrane components. Functional experiments showed that the

addition of type I collagen or human fibronectin to the culture medium significantly accelerated wound

closure on epithelial cell co-cultures. This system may provide a new tool to investigate the mechanisms

that regulate wound healing in the intestinal epithelium.