Abstract
Uterine malignant stromal tumors are rare neoplasms characterized by fatal prognosis. At the moment no effective systemic treatment is available for metas-tases or recurrent disease. The drugs employed in advanced neoplasms are ipos-famide, doxorubicin or epidoxorubicin, but the clinical response to chemotherapy is poor. Recent studies have shown that cells in gastrointestinal stromal tumors express a growth factor receptor with tyrosine kinase activity termed c-kit. Lately reports of efficacy of a specific anticancer drug with imatinib (STI571) based on specific molecular abnormalities of proto-oncogene C-kit present in gastrointestinal stromal tumors induced us to identify the C-kit phenotype also in uterine leiomyosarcomas. These data may be useful for treating metastatic uterine leiomyosarcomas with increased C-kit kinase activity.
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