Chief of Molecular Diagnostics
Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine

Dr. Petr Starostik comes to RPCI from Wuerzburg University, Germany, where he served as Director of the Molecular Diagnostics Laboratory. He earned his medical degree from the Vienna University School of Medicine, Vienna, Austria (1984); completed residency training in Laboratory Medicine (1995) at the Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, MO; and a fellowship in Hematopathology (1997) at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston. Dr. Starostik is certified in Clinical Pathology and Hematology by the American Board of Pathology.

Dr. Starostik?s research interests include the role of genetic aberrations in the development of hematologic malignancies and thymoma and their use as tumor markers and prognostic factors. His research specialty is the role of tumor suppressor gene and oncogene aberrations in the development of leukemia and lymphoma and their use as potential diagnostic and prognostic markers. We study genetic aberrations occurring during lymphoma and leukemia development and apply the latest basic research results in the development of new molecular diagnostics tests.

The subject of ongoing investigations are genetic aberrations in lymphoma: DLBCL (diffuse large B-cell lymphoma) and ETL (enteropathy-type T-cell lymphoma). Recently, we identified several genetic aberrations playing a role in the development of gastric marginal zone B-cell lymphoma of MALT-type (MZBCL-MALT) and its aggressive counterpart, DLBCL. We showed that patients suffering from MZBCL-MALT can be divided into 2 groups based on the genetic make-up of the tumor. Namely, MZBCL-MALTs characterized by the t(11;18) which are, interestingly, cases resistant to Helicobacter pylori antibiotic eradication therapy. These lymphomas are much less likely to transform into high-grade DLBCL. The other group consists of tumors negative for the t(11;18) but displaying other genetic abnormalities (on 3q27, 11q, 18q21). Some of the latter will respond to antibiotics. However, MZBCL-MALTs negative for the t(11;18) and not responding to antibiotics seem to be the primary candidates for transformation into high-grade DLBCL.

In a recent work we characterized by microsatellite analysis chromosomal regions frequently amplified or deleted in ETL. The most frequent amplification occurred on the long arm of chromosome 9 (in 44% of studied tumors) and we are currently trying to characterize genes implicated in this aberration.

He is a member of the Association for Molecular Pathology, the American Association for Cancer Research and the American Society of Hematology and has authored or co-authored more than 40 journal articles, abstracts and book chapters.

Key Publications

• Cejkova P, Zettl A, Baumgartner AK, Chott A, Konrad Muller-Hermelink HK, Starostik P.  Amplification of Notch1 and ABL1 gene loci is a frequent aberration in enteropathy-type T-cell lymphoma. Virchows Archive 446:416-420, 2005.
• Mojica WD, Saxena R, Starostik P, Cheney RT. CD117+ small cell lung cancer lacks the asp 816-->val point mutation in exon 17. Histopathology 47:517-522, 2005.
• Inoue M, Starostik P, Zettl A, Strobel P, Schwarz S, Scaravilli F, Henry K, Willcox N, Muller-Hermelink HK, Marx A. Correlating of genetic aberrations with WHO-defined histology and stage across the spectrum of thymomas. Cancer Res 63:3708-3715, 2003.
• Re D, Starostik P, Massoudi N, Staratschek-Jox A, Dries V, Thomas RK, Diehl V, Wolf J. Allelic losses on chromosome 6q25 in Hodgkin and Reed-Sternberg cells. Cancer Res 2003:63: 2606-2609.
• Feuchtenberger M, Tony HP, Rouziere AS, Jacobi A, Dorner T, Kneitz C, Starostik P. Semiquantitative and qualitative assessment of B-lymphocyte V(H) repertoire by a fluorescent multiplex PCR. J Immunol Methods 276:121-127, 2003.
• Baumgartner AK, Zettl A, Chott A, Ott G, Muller-Hermelink HK, Starostik P. High frequency of genetic aberrations in enteropathy-type T-cell lymphoma. Lab Invest 83:1509-1516, 2003.
• Starostik P, Patzner J, Greiner A, Schwarz S, Kalla J, Ott G, Muller-Hermelink HK. Gastric marginal zone B-cell lymphomas of MALT-type develop along two distinct pathogenetic pathways. Plenary paper. Blood 99:3-9, 2002.
• Inoue M, Marx A, Zettl A, Strobel P, Schwarz S, Muller-Hermelink HK, Starostik P. Chromosome 6 suffers frequent and multiple aberrations in thymoma. Am J Pathol 161:1507-1513, 2002.
• Zettl A, Lee SS, Rudiger T, Starostik P, Marino M, Kirchner T, Ott M, Muller-Hermelink HK, Ott G. Epstein-Barr virus-associated B-cell lymphoproliferative disorders in angioimmunoblastic T-cell lymphoma and peripheral T-cell lymphoma, unspecified. Am J Clin Pathol 117:368-378, 2002.
• Fischbach W, Goebeler-Kolve M, Starostik P, Greiner A, Muller-Hermelink HK. Minimal residual low-grade gastric MALT-type lymphoma after eradication of Helicobacter pylori. Lancet 360:547-548, 2002.
• Starostik P and Muller-Hermelink HK. Diagnosis of microsatellite instability-positive colorectal cancer. Expert Review of Molecular Diagnostics 1:71-80, 2001.
• Zhou R, Zettl A, Strobel P, Wagner K, Muller-Hermelink HK, Zhang S, Marx A, Starostik P. WHO type B3 and C thymomas show a similar pattern of genetic aberrations different from type A thymic epithelial tumors. Am J Pathol 159:1853-1860, 2001.