Karasavvidou Foteini, Barbanis Sotirios, Pappa Dimitra, Moutzouris George, Tzortzis Vasilios, Melekos Michael D, Koukoulis George
Department of Pathology, University Hospital, Thessaly, Greece.
Arch Pathol Lab Med. 2008 Dec;132(12):1912-5. doi: 10.5858/132.12.1912.
Invasion and the depth of invasion affect significantly the prognosis in urothelial carcinomas. The histopathologic evaluation of invasion may be problematic in some cases. Application of new immunohistochemical markers may facilitate the assessment of invasion. Fascin, one of these markers, is an actin-bundling protein involved in tumor cell migration. Fascin expression is increased in various carcinomas. Prior to this research, to our knowledge, only one study exists regarding fascin expression in urothelial carcinomas.
To characterize the expression of fascin in additional cases of urothelial carcinoma and to verify statistically a relationship between fascin overexpression and invasiveness in these tumors.
We examined fascin immunoreactivity in 116 specimens of urothelial carcinomas obtained from 116 patients including 96 men and 20 women. Fifty-eight cases were ranked as low-grade carcinomas, pTa stage, and 58 cases were ranked as high-grade carcinomas--11 were ranked as stage pTa, 21 were ranked as pT1, and 26 were ranked as pT2 carcinomas. Fascin immunoreactivity was assessed semiquantitatively in tumor cells. In each case, we ascribed 3 immunoreactivity scores, one for extent, one for intensity, and a combined immunoreactivity score.
The combined immunoreactivity score was significantly higher in invasive carcinomas. In addition, strong staining was observed exclusively in invasive carcinomas. None of the pTa tumors demonstrated intense staining, including those ranked at the higher grade.
Our results point to an association between fascin immunostaining and urothelial carcinoma invasiveness and suggest that fascin overexpression may be a marker of aggressive urothelial carcinomas.
浸润及浸润深度对尿路上皮癌的预后有显著影响。在某些情况下，浸润的组织病理学评估可能存在问题。应用新的免疫组化标志物可能有助于浸润的评估。Fascin是这些标志物之一，是一种参与肿瘤细胞迁移的肌动蛋白捆绑蛋白。Fascin在各种癌中表达增加。据我们所知，在本研究之前，仅有一项关于尿路上皮癌中Fascin表达的研究。
在更多尿路上皮癌病例中表征Fascin的表达，并从统计学上验证Fascin过表达与这些肿瘤侵袭性之间的关系。
我们检测了116例尿路上皮癌标本中Fascin的免疫反应性，这些标本来自116例患者，其中包括96例男性和20例女性。58例被列为低级别癌，pTa期，58例被列为高级别癌——11例为pTa期，21例为pT1期，26例为pT2期癌。对肿瘤细胞中的Fascin免疫反应性进行半定量评估。在每个病例中，我们赋予3个免疫反应性评分，一个用于范围，一个用于强度，以及一个综合免疫反应性评分。
侵袭性癌的综合免疫反应性评分显著更高。此外，仅在侵袭性癌中观察到强染色。所有pTa肿瘤均未显示强染色，包括那些高级别的肿瘤。
我们的结果表明Fascin免疫染色与尿路上皮癌侵袭性之间存在关联，并提示Fascin过表达可能是侵袭性尿路上皮癌的一个标志物。
