The impact of cytogenetics and molecular genetics in modern pathology

Soft tissue tumors still represent a huge and very heterogeneous group of mesenchymal tumors and the classification within certain groups is still not always easy to perform. Within the recent years classic chromosome analysis, molecular cytogenetics, and molecular analyses became more and more important for the classification of solid tumors. For many tumor entities even the genes being responsible for tumor initiation have been cloned. Although we are still far away from understanding the precise mechanisms of tumor initiation and tumor progression, huge steps towards a better understanding have been performed. Molecular and molecular-cytogenetic methods become increasingly useful in diagnosis and strong cooperation between pathologists and geneticists will improve the diagnostic tools towards a more distinct classification of different tumor entities. Herein, some major advances in the cytogenetic and molecular characterization and classification of soft tissue tumors are summarized.