Sera from eleven patients with gonadal germ cell tumors were tested for alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) by counterelectrophoresis. Ovarian neoplasms containing either the endodermal sinus tumor (EST) or dysgerminoma and half of the testicular embryonal carcinomas elaborated the protein into the serum. The presence of AFP in the serum seemed to correlate with early metastasis or a fatal outcome. That th...

Human germ cell tumors (GCTs) may have variable histology and clinical behavior, depending on factors such as sex of the patient, age at clinical diagnosis, and anatomical site of the tumor. Some types of GCT, i.e., the seminomas/germinomas/dysgerminomas and embryonal carcinomas (the stem cell component of nonseminomas), have pluripotent potential, which is demonstrated by their capacity to dif...

Patients with Disorders of Sex Development (DSD), especially those with gonadal dysgenesis and hypovirilization are at risk of developing malignant type II germ cell tumors/cancer (GCC) (seminoma/dysgerminoma and nonseminoma), with either carcinoma in situ (CIS) or gonadoblastoma (GB) as precursor lesion. In 10-15% of 46,XY gonadal dysgenesis cases (i.e., Swyer syndrome), SRY mutations, residin...