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Immunohistochemical Markers of Yolk Sac Tumors

  • Chapter
The Human Yolk Sac and Yolk Sac Tumors

Abstract

Teilum’s pioneering studies established yolk sac tumors (endodermal sinus tumors) as a separate entity of human germ cell tumors. His comparative studies, stretching over almost 3 decades, formed the basis of our understanding of its various morphological types and clinical behavior resulting in the still widely used eponym Teilum’s tumor (for review see Teilum 1976). His interpretation of this subtype of embryonal carcinoma as one recapitulating early differentiation toward the yolk sac derivatives was strongly supported by the experimental studies on the developmental biology of rodent yolk sac and its neoplasms by Pierce (see Chap. 12, this volume). For the sake of the arguments forming the title theme of this chapter it may be noted that immunohistochemical techniques introduced by Coons a few years earlier were already used by Pierce and his collaborators (including Joseph Feldman, later the long-time editor-in-chief of Journal of Immunology) to show that the characteristic hyaline in the PAS-positive globules of yolk sac tumors was antigenically related to the hyaline of Reichert’s membrane and produced by the parietal yolk sac cells, thus supporting a yolk sac origin for these tumors (Pierce et al. 1962).

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  1. E. Saksela
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Head of Department, University Hospital, E-18012, Granada, Spain

    Francisco F. Nogales (Professor of Pathology) (Professor of Pathology)

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Saksela, E. (1993). Immunohistochemical Markers of Yolk Sac Tumors. In: Nogales, F.F. (eds) The Human Yolk Sac and Yolk Sac Tumors. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-77852-0_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-77852-0_12

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