Gastrointestinal Surgery Department, Guangxi Medical University Cancer Hospital, Nanning, People's Republic of China.
Guangxi Colorectal Clinical Research Center, Nanning, People's Republic of China.
Technol Cancer Res Treat. 2021 Jan-Dec;20:15330338211037175. doi: 10.1177/15330338211037175.
The expression of carcinoembryonic protein (CEA) is an important biological marker and therapeutic target in colorectal cancer (CRC). CEA expression heterogeneity confers resistance to CEA-targeting immunotherapy antibodies. Thus, quantification of the CEA-positive cell ratio among all tumor cells would be important in identifying patients that would benefit from CEA-targeted therapies. However, the proportion of tumor cells that express CEA within primary and metastasized tumors at different sites has not been studied. Therefore, the present study aimed to determine CEA positive cell proportion in paired CRC primary foci, liver metastases, and lymph node (LN) metastases, and whether proportion of CEA positive cell differs among colorectal cancer primary foci, liver metastases, and LN metastases from 26 patients. The CEA expression was detected by immunohistochemical assay. Then we set up a quantification approach to quantify the proportion of CEA-positive cells based on the TissueGnostics (TG) system. Then the proportion of CEA positive cells were measured and compared among primary foci, liver metastases, and LN metastases. As a result, the proportion of CEA positive tumor cells was slightly higher in liver metastases than in primary foci (89.8% ± 2.71% vs 82.1% ± 5.05%, < 0.001). The proportion of CEA-positive cells was significantly lower in LN metastases than in primary foci (82.3% ± 4.32% vs 70.28% ± 5.04%, < 0.001). In 8 cases with matched CRC primary foci, liver metastases, and LN metastases, the proportions of CEA proportion in liver metastasis was the highest, followed by primary foci and LNs metastasis. In conclusion, this study provided an new approach for quantification of CEA positive cell in tumors and proved the percentage of CEA-positive cells varied in different metastases.
癌胚蛋白（CEA）的表达是结直肠癌（CRC）的一个重要的生物学标志物和治疗靶点。CEA 表达的异质性导致对 CEA 靶向免疫治疗抗体的耐药性。因此，定量分析所有肿瘤细胞中 CEA 阳性细胞的比例对于确定受益于 CEA 靶向治疗的患者非常重要。然而，在不同部位的原发性和转移性肿瘤中，CEA 表达的肿瘤细胞比例尚未得到研究。因此，本研究旨在确定配对 CRC 原发性灶、肝转移灶和淋巴结（LN）转移灶中 CEA 阳性细胞的比例，以及 26 例患者的结直肠癌原发性灶、肝转移灶和 LN 转移灶中 CEA 阳性细胞的比例是否存在差异。采用免疫组织化学法检测 CEA 表达。然后，我们建立了一种基于 TissueGnostics（TG）系统的定量方法来定量 CEA 阳性细胞的比例。然后测量并比较了原发性灶、肝转移灶和 LN 转移灶中 CEA 阳性细胞的比例。结果显示，肝转移灶中 CEA 阳性肿瘤细胞的比例略高于原发性灶（89.8%±2.71%比 82.1%±5.05%，<0.001）。LN 转移灶中 CEA 阳性细胞的比例明显低于原发性灶（82.3%±4.32%比 70.28%±5.04%，<0.001）。在 8 例配对的 CRC 原发性灶、肝转移灶和 LN 转移灶中，肝转移灶中 CEA 比例最高，其次是原发性灶和 LNs 转移灶。总之，本研究提供了一种新的方法来定量肿瘤中的 CEA 阳性细胞，并证明了不同转移部位的 CEA 阳性细胞比例存在差异。
