A 58 years old lady reported with history of progressively increasing lump in the neck. Patient had earlier undergone sub-total thyroidectomy (details not available) in a private institute one year back. Fine needle aspiration cytology (FNAC) of the present lump revealed features of papillary carcinoma thyroid. Patient subsequently underwent total thyroidectomy along with excision of a tumor nodule in the larynx. Gross examination of the specimen revealed a tumor nodule in the right lobe of the thyroid. Microscopic examination of the tumor nodule in the thyroid and larynx revealed a columnar cell variant of papillary carcinoma thyroid. Very few reports describing the cytomorphologic features of this variant of papillary carcinoma are available in the published literature. These reports highlight the absence or paucity of nuclear grooves and intranuclear inclusions in this variant. We describe a case of columnar cell variant of papillary carcinoma where nuclear grooves were prominently seen. In addition, we report the occurrence of rosette-like structures which were brought out better on FNA smears. These rosette-like structures have not been emphasized earlier in the published literature. The cytomorphologic features of this rare variant are also reviewed in this report.

Molecular stratification of high-grade serous ovarian carcinoma (HGSC) for targeted therapy is a pertinent approach in improving prognosis of this highly heterogeneous disease. Enabling the same necessitates identification of class-specific biomarkers and their robust detection in the clinic. We have earlier resolved three discrete molecular HGSC classes associated with distinct functional behavior based on their gene expression patterns, biological networks, and pathways. An important difference revealed was that Class 1 is likely to exhibit cooperative cell migration (CCM), Class 2 undergoes epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT), while Class 3 is possibly capable of both modes of migration. In the present study, we define clinical stratification of HGSC tumors through the establishment of standard operating procedures for immunohistochemistry and histochemistry based detection of a panel of biomarkers including TCF21, E-cadherin, PARP1, Slug, AnnexinA2, and hyaluronan. Further development and application of scoring guidelines based on expression of this panel in cell line-derived xenografts, commercial tissue microarrays, and patient tumors led to definitive stratification of samples. Biomarker expression was observed to vary significantly between primary and metastatic tumors suggesting class switching during disease progression. Another interesting feature in the study was of enhanced CCM-marker expression in tumors following disease progression and chemotherapy. These stratification principles and the new information thus generated is the first step towards class-specific personalized therapies in the disease.