Yu-Chung Wu

Taipei Medical University | TMU · College of Medicine

Introduction: Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and their proliferative ability in lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) were not well-investigated. We developed a protocol combining an efficient viable CTC isolation and in-vitro cultivation for the CTC enumeration and proliferation to evaluate their clinical significance. Method: The peripheral blood of 124...

Background: Stereotactic ablative radiotherapy (SABR) is now the standard of care for patients with inoperable early-stage lung cancer. Many of these patients are elderly. EGFR (epidermal growth factor receptor) mutation is also common in the Asian population. Methods: To evaluate the effects of old age and EGFR mutation on treatment outcomes an...

Background Although rest-activity circadian rhythm (RACR) disruption is associated with mortality in patients with cancer, few studies have examined the effect of RACR on patients with esophageal and gastric cancer. Objective The aim of this study was to identify the predictors of RACR. Methods This cross-sectional, single-site study included...

Background: The optimal type of esophagectomy and extent of lymphadenectomy for patients after neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (nCRT) for esophageal squamous cell carcinoma remain controversial. We hypothesized that a more radical resection is associated with better survival. Methods: Data of patients who received nCRT followed by resection for es...

Lymph node metastasis is one of the most important prognostic factors in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma. However, the optimal extent of lymph node dissection is still under debate. We specifically address several controversies regarding lymph node dissection, for example, recurrent laryngeal node lymphadenectomy, cervical lymphadenectomy, and t...

Objectives: In this study, we examined predictors of exercise adherence, contamination and dropout in lung and oesophageal cancer patients who participated in two randomised controlled trials. Methods: We used data on 188 lung and oesophageal cancer patients from two previous studies (intervention: moderate-intensity walking for 12 weeks). Basel...

Lung adenocarcinoma has a strong propensity to metastasize to the brain. The brain metastases are difficult to treat and can cause significant morbidity and mortality. Identifying patients with increased risk of developing brain metastasis can assist medical decision-making, facilitating a closer surveillance or justifying a preventive treatment. W...

Background: Esophageal cancer patients experience severe symptoms and poor quality of life. Objective: We examined the effects of a rehabilitation program on quality of life, sleep, rest-activity rhythms, anxiety, and depression of esophageal cancer patients. Methods: Forty-four patients with esophageal cancer were randomly assigned to an expe...

Background The treatment for stage III non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) often involves multi-modality treatment. This retrospective study aimed to evaluate whether multidisciplinary team (MDT) discussion results in better patient survival. Materials and methods MDT discussion was optional before February 2016 and was actively encouraged by the M...

Nicotine in tobacco smoke is considered carcinogenic in several malignancies including lung cancer. The high incidence of lung adenocarcinoma (LAC) in non-smokers, however, remains unexplained. Although LAC has long been less associated with smoking behavior based on previous epidemiological correlation studies, the effect of environmental smoke co...

Background Taiwan has witnessed a surge in the incidence of colorectal cancer (CRC), of which 40–60% metastasize. Continuous updating of cytoreductive strategies in metastatic CRC (mCRC) has contributed to median overall survival reaching 40 months. In this changing scenario, to standardize the approaches across Taiwan, a group of experts from the...

Background Adenocarcinoma is the most common type of lung cancer, and pre-operative biopsy plays an important role to determine its major subtypes. As proposed by the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC), American Thoracic Society (ATS), and European Respiratory Society (ERS) in 2011, the predominant histological subtype o...

Background: Lobectomy plus lymph node dissection is the standard treatment of early-stage lung cancer, but the low lymph node metastasis rate with ground-glass opacity (GGO) makes surgeons not perform lymphadenectomy. This study aimed to re-evaluate the lymph node metastasis rate of GGO to help make a clinical judgment. Methods: We performed thi...

Objectives: An optimal method for preoperative localization of small lung nodules is yet to be established, and there are few comparative studies in the literature. In the present study, we aimed to compare electromagnetic navigation-guided and computed tomography (CT)-guided methods of percutaneous transthoracic localization. Methods: The clini...

Background The role of extracapsular lymph node involvement (ELNI) in esophageal cancer has not been fully investigated. We aim to assess its incidence and prognostic significance in patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) treated with and without neoadjuvant treatments.Methods Data of patients who underwent esophagectomy for ESCC i...

Background: Thoracoscopic resection of small pulmonary nodules can be challenging, which highlights the importance of preoperative localization. We report our experience with electromagnetic navigation (EMN)-guided localization. Methods: The clinical, radiographic, surgical, and pathological data of patients who underwent EMN-guided preoperative...

Tumor invasion and metastasis are the major causes of treatment failure and mortality in lung cancer patients. In this study, we identified a group of genes with differential expression in in situ and invasive lung adenocarcinoma tissues by expression profiling; among these genes we further characterized the association of the upregulation of PRNP,...

Introduction: Digital thoracic drainage systems are a new technology in minimally invasive thoracic surgery. However, the criteria for chest tube removal in digital thoracic drainage systems have never been evaluated. We aim to investigate the incidence and predictive factors of complications and reinterventions after drainage tube removal in pati...

Sclerosing pneumocytoma is a unique benign neoplasm of the lungs. The molecular alterations in sclerosing pneumocytoma are not well understood. In a previous whole-exome sequencing study, recurrent AKT1 point mutation was observed in about half of the cases of sclerosing pneumocytoma. However, in the remaining half, cancer-related mutations have st...

Background Studies addressing both lymphovascular invasion (LVI) and perineural invasion (PNI) in patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) treated with or without neoadjuvant therapy are limited. We aimed to analyze the incidence and prognostic significance of LVI and PNI in patients with thoracic ESCC. Methods This retrospective st...

Mediastinal Mullerian cyst was first reported by Hattori in 2005. We report a case of a posterior mediastinal paravertebral cyst found incidentally by surveillance chest roentgenogram in a 44-year-old woman. She had a "no drain" uniportal thoracoscopic removal procedure, and histologic examination showed single layer of columnar epithelial lining t...

Objectives: The 8th edition American Joint Committee on Cancer Tumour-Nodes-Metastasis (TNM) staging system distinguishes between the clinical (c), pathological (p) and post-neoadjuvant pathological (yp) stage groups. However, the ability to discriminate between ypStage II and ypStage III is poor. We aim to identify prognostic factors in patients...

Purpose: To develop and validate procedure-specific risk prediction for recurrence following resection for early-stage lung adenocarcinoma (ADC) and investigate risk prediction utility in identifying patients who may benefit from adjuvant chemotherapy (ACT). Basic procedures: In patients who underwent resection for small (≤2 cm) lung ADC (lobect...

Tumor cell heterogeneity can make selection of appropriate interventions to lung cancer a challenge. Novel biomarkers predictive of disease risk and treatment response are needed to improve personalized treatment strategies. O-GlcNAcylation, the attachment of β-N-acetylglucosamine (O-GlcNAc) to serine or threonine residues of intracellular proteins...

Background Occasionally, malignant pleural disease is only detected unexpectedly during surgery in patients with pulmonary adenocarcinoma. Previous studies mostly focused on the role of main tumor resection on patient's outcome, barely addressing the position of postoperative systemic therapy. Methods The medical records of 5321 non-small cell lun...

The effects of long-acting muscarinic receptor antagonists (LAMAs) have not been evaluated in a model with simultaneous lung inflammation and small airway remodeling induced by cigarette smoke (CS). We exposed the mice to CS for four weeks with daily treatment with a LAMA (glycopyrronium bromide, NVA237) or its vehicle. Human bronchial epithelial c...

Introduction: The role of adjuvant chemotherapy for patients with stage I non-small cell lung cancer remains unknown. The prognostic value of histological subtypes in resected node-negative small-sized lung adenocarcinoma has not been widely investigated. This study investigated the prognostic factors in patients with node-negative lung adenocarci...

Background Pathological response is an important marker for tumor aggressiveness in patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) who receive preoperative chemoradiation followed by esophagectomy. We aim to evaluate the prognostic value of histological factors after trimodality treatments. Methods91 patients who received preoperative chem...

Introduction: The programmed cell death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) pathway plays an important role in maintaining immune homeostasis. PD-L1 pathway may also protect tumor from attack of cytotoxic T cells. The prognostic significance of PD-L1 expression in pulmonary squamous cell carcinoma has not been well demonstrated. Methods: A total of 98 patients with r...

Background: The programmed cell death-ligand 1 (PD-L1) pathway plays an important role in maintaining immune homeostasis. The PD-L1 pathway may also protect tumors from attack by cytotoxic T cells. Blockade of programmed cell death 1 (PD1) or PD-L1 induced durable tumor regression in patients with advanced cancers, including non-small cell lung ca...

Background: There is a lack of large, prospective, randomized study comparing thoracoscopic and open lobectomy in terms of long-term survival in the setting of non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC). Additionally, large case series evaluating the issue are limited. Until now, it has not been determined whether thoracoscopic lobectomy entails a long...

Objectives: The aim of the study is to demonstrate the relationship between clinicopathological variables and occult lymph node metastasis in resected lung adenocarcinoma. Methods: The clinicopathological characteristics of 471 patients with clinical N2-negative status undergoing resection for lung adenocarcinoma of 3 cm or smaller at Taipei Vet...

Background: Thymic carcinomas are rare tumors for which surgical resection is the first treatment of choice. The role of adjuvant treatment after surgery is unknown because of limited available data. The present study evaluated the efficacy of post-surgery adjuvant chemotherapy or radiotherapy in patients with thymic carcinoma. Methods: To evalu...

Background: The benefit of adjuvant chemotherapy remains controversial for patients with stage IB non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). This study investigated the effect of adjuvant chemotherapy and the predictors of benefit from adjuvant chemotherapy in patients with stage IB lung adenocarcinoma. Methods: A total of 243 patients with completely...

This is the minimal data set. (XLSX)

Background Few studies have investigated prognostic biomarkers of distant metastases of lung cancer. One of the central difficulties in identifying biomarkers from microarray data is the availability of only a small number of samples, which results overtraining. Recently obtained evidence reveals that epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT) of tumo...

Recurrence after surgical resection is the most common cause of treatment failure in patients with non-small-cell lung cancer. The aim of the study is to investigate the prognostic factors of postrecurrence survival (PRS) in patients of resected lung adenocarcinoma. The clinicopathological characteristics of 179 patients with recurrence after compl...

Objective: The predictive value of the new International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer, American Thoracic Society and European Respiratory Society (IASLC/ATS/ERS) classification of lung adenocarcinoma predicting lymph node metastasis in lung adenocarcinoma has not been well demonstrated. Methods: Histological classification of 246 patien...

Lung cancer mortality remains high even after successful resection. Adjuvant treatment benefits stage II and III patients, but not stage I patients, and most studies fail to predict recurrence in stage I patients. Our study included 211 lung adenocarcinoma patients (stages I-IIIA; 81% stage I) who received curative resections at Taipei Veterans Gen...

While preoperative chemoradiation followed by surgery (pre-OP CRT) has been widely applied in the treatment of patients with esophageal cancer, some studies have shown a survival benefit of postoperative chemoradiation (post-OP CRT). The optimal combination of multimodality therapy and the sequence of surgery and chemoradiation for esophageal cance...

Although genome-wide expression analysis has become a routine tool for gaining insight into molecular mechanisms, extraction of information remains a major challenge. It has been unclear why standard statistical methods, such as the t-test and ANOVA, often lead to low levels of reproducibility, how likely applying fold-change cutoffs to enhance rep...

To retrospectively analyze the efficacy and short- to mid-term survival rate of cryoablation for malignant lung tumors METHODS: Percutaneous CT-guided cryoablation for 45 malignant lung tumors in 26 patients during 41 sessions from 2009-2013 were performed. Follow up CT-scan were used to determine local tumor progression. Survival rate, local tumor...

The aim of the study is to demonstrate the relationship between clinicopathological variables and organ sites of metastasis in resected lung adenocarcinoma. The clinicopathological characteristics of 748 patients of resected lung adenocarcinoma at Taipei Veterans General Hospital between 2004 and 2012 were retrospectively reviewed. The prognostic v...

Objective: Factors predicting post-recurrence survival (PRS) in lung adenocarcinoma have not been reported. This study aimed to investigate the prognostic factors of PRS, including the new classification of lung adenocarcinoma proposed by the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC), the American Thoracic Society (ATS), and th...

Background: Chylothorax is an infrequent but well-known complication in lung cancer surgery. Previous published studies on this topic are limited, and thoracotomy has been the main surgical approach for treatment. However, chylothorax after lung cancer surgery performed solely by video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS) has rarely been investig...

Background: Whereas standard (infracarinal) mediastinal lymphadenectomy refers to the clearance of lymph nodes in the middle and lower posterior mediastinum, extension along right side of trachea and upper mediastinum is termed extended lymphadenectomy. The benefit of an extended versus standard lymphadenectomy in esophageal cancer is unclear. Me...

This study investigated the pattern of recurrence of lung adenocarcinoma and the predictive value of histologic classification in resected lung adenocarcinoma using the new International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC)/American Thoracic Society (ATS)/European Respiratory Society (ERS) classification system. Histologic classificatio...

Metastasis is the major cause of death in colorectal cancer (CRC) patients. Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are believed to cause metastasis and serve as a prognostic marker for mortality in clinical stage IV patients. However, most studies are conducted in late-stage cases when distant metastases have already occurred; thus, such results provide li...

Little is known about the efficacy of chemoradiation therapy after surgery for patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma. This retrospective study aimed to determine whether postoperative chemoradiation improves survival compared with surgery alone. Of 290 patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, 104 received postoperative chemoradi...

Background: Thoracoscopic lobectomy is a safe and effective procedure; however, the ways by which to incorporate this technically demanding procedure into residency training is still unknown. We reported on the outcomes of thoracoscopic lobectomies performed by a single thoracic resident, who was simultaneously undergoing training for both open an...

Although significant improvement in myasthenic symptoms has been reported following the removal of thymolipomas, information on surgical outcomes among patients with thymolipomatous myasthenia gravis (MG) is limited. This was a retrospective review of patients who underwent extended thymectomy for treatment of MG. From 1995 to 2010, 267 patients wi...

CRNN gene expression is downregulated in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC), although its clinical implications in esophageal cancer remain unclear. We performed integrated microarray analysis and identified the CRNN gene as 1 of the major downregulated genes in ESCC. CRNN downregulation was validated at the nucleic acid level in 16 ESCC cas...

Proceedings: AACR 104th Annual Meeting 2013; Apr 6-10, 2013; Washington, DC Objective: Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death worldwide. Adenocarcinoma is the most common histological type of non-small cell lung cancer. The International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer (IASLC), the American Thoracic Society (ATS), and the Europe...

Background and objectiveBile acid (BA) aspiration is associated with various lung diseases. It was hypothesized that BA may induce changes in alveolar epithelium permeability and contribute to the pathogenesis of lung injury. Methods Human alveolar epithelial cells were grown in monolayer and stimulated with a major component of BA, chenodeoxycholi...

Background: Expression of transforming growth factor (TGF)-β1 and increases in angiogenesis and deposition of extracellular matrix are the key features of tracheal granulation formation. The aim of this study was to investigate the potential role of thalidomide in preventing granulation tissue formation from the aspect of cellular effects in vitro...

Gorham's disease (GD) is rare and characterized by non-neoplastic lymphovascular proliferation and massive osteolysis. Its clinical course is usually protracted, but sometimes life threatening when vital structures are involved or when complicated with chylothorax. There is no optimal treatment guideline for GD complicated with chylothorax. Surgica...

Objective: This study investigated the prognostic value of the new International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer, American Thoracic Society, and European Respiratory Society (IASLC/ATS/ERS) lung adenocarcinoma classification in resected stage I lung adenocarcinoma. Methods: Histological classification of 283 patients undergoing surgical...

The epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), which is up-regulated in lung cancer, involves the activation of mitogenic signals and triggers multiple signaling cascades. To dissect these EGFR cascades, we used 14 different phospho-EGFR antibodies to quantify protein phosphorylation using an in situ proximity ligation assay (in situ PLA). Phosphoryl...

The calculation of in situ PLA signal of pEGFR-Thr654 in Figure 3B by BlobFinder. The raw images (RGB images) of Figure 3B were converted into gray-scale images (the white dots were in situ PLA signals). The in situ PLA signals, which were calculated by BlobFinder, were outlined with red dots. (A) The in situ PLA signals of pEGFR-Thr654. (B) The en...

The quantification of the phosphorylation status of 9 phospho-EGFR sites in the H1299 cells with expression of vector control (H1299-Vector), wild type EGFR (H1299-EGFR-WT) and EGFR with L858R mutant (H1299-EGFR-L858R). In situ PLA images were shown in the Figure S2. Images from each slide with in situ PLA sample were acquired at 5 different fields...

The antibody list for this study. (DOC)