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6 slides generated from the cancer page, with a quiz from the open benchmark and speaker notes that cite the sources. Arrow keys move between slides; Print gives one slide per page.
Basaloid squamous cell carcinoma is a variant of squamous lung cancer made of small, dark, tightly packed cells that grow in nests; survival in the source series was lower than in other squamous cell carcinoma. No trial exists in the variant alone, so the parent's evidence applies: it is treated as squamous lung cancer by stage, and its high PD-L1 is why checkpoint inhibitors are used.
The WHO classification lists basaloid carcinoma as a form of squamous cell carcinoma (a pure form and a mixed variant with more than 50 percent basaloid pattern), having moved it out of large cell carcinoma in 2015 once immunohistochemistry showed squamous lineage in every case (Travis 2015; Pelosi 2014). Copy-number and expression profiling of 93 squamous cell carcinomas, 42 of them basaloid, showed that pure basaloid tumours have a specific expression profile, with cell-cycle, transcription, chromatin and splicing genes up and squamous differentiation genes down, from which a two-gene (SOX4, IVL) immunohistochemistry predictor separated basaloid from non-basaloid tumours with 94 percent accuracy (Brambilla 2014). In 56 resected basaloid carcinomas PD-L1 expression correlated with CD8-positive and PD-1-positive infiltrating T cells, with fair to poor agreement between some antibody clones (Modern Pathology 2016).
How it differs from its parent: the source series calls its prognosis "dismal" compared with other squamous cell carcinoma, and its molecular profile is distinct; but no therapy has been shown to work better in it (Brambilla 2014).
| Setting | Approach | Guideline |
|---|---|---|
| All stages | Treated as squamous cell carcinoma of the lung; no trial in the variant. | not mapped |