Retrospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Gastroenterol. May 14, 2015; 21(18): 5548-5554
Published online May 14, 2015. doi: 10.3748/wjg.v21.i18.5548
Phagocytosis (cannibalism) of apoptotic neutrophils by tumor cells in gastric micropapillary carcinomas
Valeria Barresi, Giovanni Branca, Antonio Ieni, Luciana Rigoli, Giovanni Tuccari, Rosario Alberto Caruso
Valeria Barresi, Giovanni Branca, Antonio Ieni, Giovanni Tuccari, Rosario Alberto Caruso, Department of Human Pathology, University of Messina, 98125 Messina, Italy
Luciana Rigoli, Department of Pediatrics, University of Messina, 98125 Messina, Italy
Author contributions: Barresi V and Branca G participated in the study conception, design and acquisition of data, contributed to the interpretation of data and drafted the manuscript; Ieni A, Rigoli L, Tuccari G and Caruso RA contributed to the acquisition and interpretation of data and helped draft the manuscript; all the authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Informed consent: All study participants in the present study provided written informed consent and the identities of all patients have been protected.
Conflict-of-interest: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Data sharing: No additional data are available.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Luciana Rigoli, MD, Department of Pediatrics, University of Messina, 1 Via Consolare Valeria, 98125 Messina, Italy. lrigoli@unime.it
Telephone: +39-9-2212120 Fax: +39-9-2213788
Received: November 12, 2014
Peer-review started: November 15, 2014
First decision: December 2, 2014
Revised: December 30, 2014
Accepted: February 12, 2015
Article in press: February 13, 2015
Published online: May 14, 2015
Processing time: 186 Days and 23 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Five rare cases of micropapillary carcinoma of the stomach are reported. Phagocytosis (cannibalism) of apoptotic neutrophils by tumor cells is demonstrated for the first time in micropapillary components of gastric carcinomas. These unique features might help us to better understand the aggressive behavior and poor prognosis of this rare entity.