First Department of Surgery, Laikon General Hospital, National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Athens, Greece.
Department of Surgery, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Nashville, TN, USA.
Adv Exp Med Biol. 2020;1226:51-56. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-36214-0_4.
Cardiac tumors are found in less than 1% of adult and pediatric autopsies. More than three-fourths of primary cardiac neoplasms are benign, with myxomas and rhabdomyomas being the most common cardiac tumors seen in adults and children, respectively. Primary malignant cardiac tumors are extremely rare, whereas metastatic lesions can be seen in approximately 8% of patients dying from cancer. Attempting to understand why the heart is so resistant to carcinogenesis and which fail-safe mechanisms malfunction when cardiac tumors do develop is particularly challenging considering the rarity of these tumors and the fact that when relevant clinical studies are published, they rarely focus on molecular pathogenesis. Apart from cancer cells, solid tumors are comprised of a concoction of noncancerous cells, and extracellular matrix constituents, which along with pH and oxygen levels jointly constitute the so-called tumor microenvironment (TME). In the present chapter, we explore mechanisms through which TME may influence cardiac carcinogenesis.
心脏肿瘤在成人和儿科尸检中不到 1%。超过四分之三的原发性心脏肿瘤是良性的，黏液瘤和横纹肌瘤分别是成人和儿童中最常见的心脏肿瘤。原发性恶性心脏肿瘤极为罕见，而转移性病变在约 8%死于癌症的患者中可见。鉴于这些肿瘤的罕见性，以及当相关临床研究发表时，它们很少关注分子发病机制，尝试理解为什么心脏如此抵抗致癌作用以及当心脏肿瘤确实发生时哪些故障安全机制会出现故障是特别具有挑战性的。除癌细胞外，实体瘤还由非癌细胞和细胞外基质成分组成，这些成分以及 pH 值和氧水平共同构成所谓的肿瘤微环境（TME）。在本章中，我们探讨了 TME 可能影响心脏癌变的机制。
