Michael
Pins, MD
Associate
Professor of Pathology
Associate Professor of Urology
Director, Pathology Core Facility of the Robert H. Lurie Comprehensive Cancer
Center
Director, Pathology Coordinating Office, Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group
(ECOG)
To contact Dr. Pins:
Feinberg 7-330
251 E. Huron Street
Chicago, IL 60611
E-Mail: m-pins@northwestern.edu
Phone: 312- 926-3213
Dr. Pins' website
PubMed
Reference Lookup
Research Interests
One specific area of interest is in the classification of renal neoplasms.
Traditional clinical and pathological parameters such as stage of the patient
and tumor grade show a good but imperfect correlation with progression of
disease and survival. Classification on purely histological features alone
has proven difficult because of a striking heterogeneity between tumors and
poor reproducibility between pathologists. The future of renal cancer classification
is at the molecular level. Characteristic chromosomal anomalies, for example,
have been correlated with aggressive behavior independent of other prognostic
variables.
A second area of interest involves ovarian tumors; specifically correlation
of histopathological findings such as microinvasion and the definition of
"tumors of borderline malignancy" for the various categories of
surface epithelial-stromal tumors of the ovary. One example is the histopathological
criteria for a diagnosis of malignancy in ovarian Brenner tumors; many of
which were over-diagnosed as carcinoma in the past, resulting in over-treatment
of some patients.