Study of the Invasive Potential of Thymomas---Immunohistochemical Analysis of the Proliferating Activity, Tumor Markers and Lymphoid Cells

  • Kuo, Tseng-Tong (PI)

Project: National Science and Technology CouncilNational Science and Technology Council Academic Grants

Project Details

Abstract

Because invasive thymomas (IT) can not be definitely differentiated from noninvasive thymomas (NT) without demonstrating the invasive growth, a search for tumor markers was conducted for the possible use in the differentiation of IT from NT. This study tested the expression of metallothionein (MT), cathepsin D, and CDw75 on 27 cases of NT, 20 cases of micro-IT, 23 cases of macro-IT, and 18 cases of thymic carcinoma (TC) by immunohistochemical method on paraffin embedded tissues. MT expression was found to have higher expression rate in IT. TC did not express MT significantly higher. Unexpectedly, MT was found to be consistently expressed in medullary (spindle cell) thymomas of NT and squamoid thymomas of macro-IT. The cause of this expression is not clear, but MT could be a tumor marker of medullary thymoma and squamoid thymoma. No conclusive results were obtained for CD and CDw75. Proliferation activity studied with Ki-67 antibody MIB-1 was not successful, because of the presence of lymphoid cells in the tumor. A preliminary study of various thymic epithelial tumors for the expression of CD44 and CD44 var (V6) showed that CD44 var (V6) was best expressed by squamoid thymoma, which further supports the invasiveness of squamoid thymoma.

Project IDs

Project ID:PB8406-1014
External Project ID:NSC84-2331-B182-089
StatusFinished
Effective start/end date01/08/9430/11/95

Keywords

  • Thymus
  • Thymoma
  • Noninvasive thymoma
  • Invasive thymoma
  • Proliferating cellnuclear antigen
  • Metallothionein
  • Lymphoid cell
  • Thymocyte
  • Interdigitatingreticulum cell
  • Macrophage
  • T cell
  • B cell
  • CDw75

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