Affiliations: Department of Pathology, | Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and | Comprehensive Cancer Center Biostatistics Unit, The
University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL 35294, USA
Note: [] Address for correspondence: W.E. Grizzle, M.D., Ph.D., Dept. of
Pathology, The University of Alabama at Birmingham, AL 35294, USA. E-mail:
grizzle@path.uab.edu
Abstract: Ovarian cancer has a high mortality rate largely due to the limited
number of ovarian carcinomas detected at an early stage. Understanding the
molecular changes occurring during the progression of ovarian carcinoma would
aid in the development of therapies that may inhibit or target metastasis.
Primary and metastatic lesions from 54 and 40 patients with advanced ovarian
carcinoma, respectively (including matched primary and metastatic lesions from
30 patients) were evaluated for nuclear accumulation of p53 (clone BP53-12-1)
and cytoplasmic and membranous immunostaining of p185 erbB-2 (clone 3B5) by
immunohistochemistry. No differences in the immunostaining of p53 and
p185erbB-2 (cytoplasm or membrane) were observed between primary and metastatic
lesions of the matched cases. Similarly, no differences in the proportion of
positive cases of p53 between primary and metastatic lesions of the matched
cases was observed. Thus, novel therapies that target p53 or p185erbB-2 can
utilize specimens from either primary or metastatic lesions to characterize
these targets prior to therapy. Spearman correlations between p53 and
p185erbB-2 (cytoplasm or membrane) immunohistochemistry scores were
insignificant for the matched cases, all primary lesions, and all metastatic
lesions. Also, no significant associations occurred between nuclear
accumulation of p53 (positive versus negative) and phenotypic expression of
p185erbB-2 (cytoplasm or membrane) immunostaining scores for the matched cases,
all primary lesions, and all metastatic lesions. Thus, the nuclear accumulation
of p53 and immunostaining of p185erbB-2 in the cytoplasm or on the cellular
membranes are independent.
Keywords: ovarian carcinoma, molecular markers, p53, and p185 erbB-2
