Winter Katarzyna, Dzieniecka Monika, Strzelczyk Janusz, Wągrowska-Danilewicz Małgorzata, Danilewicz Marian, Małecka-Wojciesko Ewa
Clinical Department of General and Oncological Gastroenterology, University Clinical Hospital No. 1, 90-153 Lodz, Poland.
Sykehuset Innlandet HF, 2618 Lillehammer, Norway.
J Clin Med. 2021 Dec 11;10(24):5804. doi: 10.3390/jcm10245804.
Fibrosis is observed both in pancreatic cancer (PDAC) and chronic pancreatitis (CP). The main cells involved in fibrosis are pancreatic stellate cells (PSCs), which activate alpha smooth muscle actin (αSMA), which is considered to be the best-known fibrosis marker. The aim of the study was to evaluate the expression of the αSMA in patients with PDAC and CP as the possible differentiation marker.
We enrolled 114 patients undergoing pancreatic resection: 83 with PDAC and 31 with CP. Normal fragments of resected specimen from 21 patients represented the control tissue. The immunoexpressions of αSMA were detected in tissue specimens with immunohistochemistry (Abcam antibodies, GB).
Mean cytoplasmatic expression of αSMA protein in PDAC stromal cells was significantly higher compared to CP: 2.42 ± 0.37 vs 1.95 ± 0.45 ( < 0.01) and control group 0.61 ± 0.45 ( < 0.01). Strong immunoexpression of the αSMA protein was found in the vast majority (80.7%) of patients with PDAC, in about half (58%) of patients with CP, and not at all in healthy tissue. The expression of αSMA of different intensity was found in all patients with PDAC and CP, while in healthy tissue was minimal or absent. In PDAC patients, αSMA expression was significantly higher in tumors of diameter higher than 3 cm compared to smaller ones ( = 0.017).
Presented findings confirm the significant role of fibrosis in both PDAC and CP; however, they do not confirm the role of αSMA as a marker of differentiation.
在胰腺癌（PDAC）和慢性胰腺炎（CP）中均观察到纤维化。参与纤维化的主要细胞是胰腺星状细胞（PSC），其可激活α平滑肌肌动蛋白（αSMA），αSMA被认为是最知名的纤维化标志物。本研究的目的是评估αSMA在PDAC和CP患者中的表达情况，将其作为可能的鉴别标志物。
我们纳入了114例行胰腺切除术的患者：83例患有PDAC，31例患有CP。来自21例患者的切除标本的正常片段作为对照组织。采用免疫组织化学法（Abcam抗体，英国）在组织标本中检测αSMA的免疫表达。
与CP相比，PDAC基质细胞中αSMA蛋白的平均细胞质表达显著更高：分别为2.42±0.37和1.95±0.45（P<0.01），与对照组0.61±0.45相比也有显著差异（P<0.01）。在绝大多数（80.7%）PDAC患者中发现αSMA蛋白呈强免疫表达，约一半（58%）CP患者中有该蛋白表达，而在健康组织中未发现。在所有PDAC和CP患者中均发现了不同强度的αSMA表达，而在健康组织中表达极少或无表达。在PDAC患者中，直径大于3 cm的肿瘤中αSMA表达显著高于较小肿瘤（P = 0.017）。
本研究结果证实了纤维化在PDAC和CP中均具有重要作用；然而，并未证实αSMA作为鉴别标志物的作用。
