Large cell is a term used in oncology. It does not refer to a particular type of cell; rather it refers to cells that are larger than would be normally expected for that type. It is frequently used when describing lymphoma and lung cancer.
It was more frequently used in the past than it is used today, when doctors often could tell little about a cell other than its size, and it was used for classification systems such as the "Working Formulation" for lymphoma. As such, the term lives on in the names of many conditions, even when the size of the cell is no longer one of the most important diagnostic criteria.
The phrase giant cell is also frequently used, especially with carcinoma.
Giant cell tumors include giant-cell tumor of bone, giant-cell tumor of the tendon sheath, [1] and giant cell fibroblastoma. [2]
Carcinoma is a malignancy that develops from epithelial cells. Specifically, a carcinoma is a cancer that begins in a tissue that lines the inner or outer surfaces of the body, and that arises from cells originating in the endodermal, mesodermal or ectodermal germ layer during embryogenesis.
Cytokeratins are keratin proteins found in the intracytoplasmic cytoskeleton of epithelial tissue. They are an important component of intermediate filaments, which help cells resist mechanical stress. Expression of these cytokeratins within epithelial cells is largely specific to particular organs or tissues. Thus they are used clinically to identify the cell of origin of various human tumors.
Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) is a comprehensive controlled vocabulary for the purpose of indexing journal articles and books in the life sciences. It serves as a thesaurus that facilitates searching. Created and updated by the United States National Library of Medicine (NLM), it is used by the MEDLINE/PubMed article database and by NLM's catalog of book holdings. MeSH is also used by ClinicalTrials.gov registry to classify which diseases are studied by trials registered in ClinicalTrials.
Endometrioid tumors are a class of tumor characterized by a resemblance to endometrium/ endometrial carcinoma, and over a third of cases have focal squamous differentiation.
Neural cell adhesion molecule (NCAM), also called CD56, is a homophilic binding glycoprotein expressed on the surface of neurons, glia and skeletal muscle. Although CD56 is often considered a marker of neural lineage commitment due to its discovery site, CD56 expression is also found in, among others, the hematopoietic system. Here, the expression of CD56 is mostly associated with, but not limited to, natural killer cells. CD56 has been detected on other lymphoid cells, including gamma delta (γδ) Τ cells and activated CD8+ T cells, as well as on dendritic cells. NCAM has been implicated as having a role in cell–cell adhesion, neurite outgrowth, synaptic plasticity, and learning and memory.
Alpharetrovirus is a genus of the family Retroviridae. It has type C morphology. Members can cause sarcomas, other tumors, and anaemia of wild and domestic birds and also affect rats.
CD30, also known as TNFRSF8, is a cell membrane protein of the tumor necrosis factor receptor family and a tumor marker.
Small cleaved cells are a distinctive type of cell that appears in certain types of lymphoma.
A germinoma is a type of germ-cell tumor, which is not differentiated upon examination. It may be benign or malignant.
A paraganglion is a group of non-neuronal cells derived of the neural crest. They are named for being generally in close proximity to sympathetic ganglia. They are essentially of two types: (1) chromaffin or sympathetic paraganglia made of chromaffin cells and (2) nonchromaffin or parasympathetic ganglia made of glomus cells. They are neuroendocrine cells, the former with primary endocrine functions and the latter with primary chemoreceptor functions.
Lactalbumin, also known as "whey protein", is the albumin contained in milk and obtained from whey. Lactalbumin is found in the milk of many mammals. There are alpha and beta lactalbumins; both are contained in milk.
Neprilysin, also known as membrane metallo-endopeptidase (MME), neutral endopeptidase (NEP), cluster of differentiation 10 (CD10), and common acute lymphoblastic leukemia antigen (CALLA) is an enzyme that in humans is encoded by the MME gene. Neprilysin is a zinc-dependent metalloprotease that cleaves peptides at the amino side of hydrophobic residues and inactivates several peptide hormones including glucagon, enkephalins, substance P, neurotensin, oxytocin, and bradykinin. It also degrades the amyloid beta peptide whose abnormal folding and aggregation in neural tissue has been implicated as a cause of Alzheimer's disease. Synthesized as a membrane-bound protein, the neprilysin ectodomain is released into the extracellular domain after it has been transported from the Golgi apparatus to the cell surface.
Carbohydrate antigen 19-9 (CA19-9), also known as sialyl-LewisA, is a tetrasaccharide which is usually attached to O-glycans on the surface of cells. It is known to play a role in cell-to-cell recognition processes. It is also a tumor marker used primarily in the management of pancreatic cancer.
CD120 can refer to two members of the tumor necrosis factor receptor superfamily: tumor necrosis factor receptor 1 (TNFR1) and tumor necrosis factor receptor 2 (TNFR2).
The large-cell lymphomas have large cells. One classification system for lymphomas divides the diseases according to the size of the white blood cells that have turned cancerous. A large cell, in this context, has a diameter of 17 to 20 μm. Other groups of lymphomas in this system are the small-cell lymphomas and mixed-cell lymphomas.
Mixed-cell lymphomas are lymphomas that have both large cells and small cells in them. This nomenclature is derived from an older system of pathology, before technological advances allowed much more precise descriptions of the affected cancerous cells.
Ets variant 5 (ETV5) is a transcription factor that in humans is encoded by the ETV5 gene. It is generated in Sertoli cells, which are found in the testes and play a crucial role in spermatogenesis. Its ortholog has been linked to both obesity and bipolar disorder.
Invasive urothelial carcinoma is a type of transitional cell carcinoma. It is a type of cancer that develops in the urinary system: the kidney, urinary bladder, and accessory organs. Transitional cell carcinoma is the most common type of bladder cancer and cancer of the ureter, urethra, renal pelvis, the ureters, the bladder, and parts of the urethra and urachus. It originates from tissue lining the inner surface of these hollow organs - transitional epithelium. The invading tumors can extend from the kidney collecting system to the bladder.