The enigmatic role of nucleophosmin in malignant melanoma: Does it have an effect?

Background: Melanoma is quite a heterogeneous group of diseases of the skin. Prognostic markers of tumor behavior are important to precisely assign individual patients for appropriate treatment protocols. Aim: The aim of our first study was to investigate nucleophosmin expression in melanoma patients and to determine its relationship with the tumor characterictics and patient prognosis. Materials and Methods: We analyzed the immunohistochemical expression of nucleophosmin in 55 melanoma patients. The immunostaining pattern was classified into two groups: Diffuse nuclear and nucleolar relocalization. We also investigated the relationship between the expression of nucleophosmin and the clinicopathological parameters sucssh as Clark level, tumor thickness, stage, histological type, location, and survey. Results: In all cases the neoplastic cells were strongly positive for nucleophosmin (14 cases diffuse nuclear, 41 cases nucleolar relocalization). No correlation was demonstrated between the expression pattern of nucleophosmin and the clinicopathological parameters and survey. Conclusions: The implications of our results, nevertheless, are that the immunohistochemical detection of nucleophosmin is not a valuable tool for predicting the outcome of patients with melanoma or identifying subgroups of patients who may be at a higher risk

Hormone Receptor, HER2/NEU and EGFR Expression in Ovarian Carcinoma - is here a Prognostic Phenotype?

WOS: 000351056900031PubMed ID: 25520097Purpose: We aimed to evaluate the effects of hormone receptor, HER2, and epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) expression on epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) prognosis and investigate whether or not phenotypic subtypes might exist. Materials and Methods: The medical records of 82 patients who were diagnosed with EOC between 2003 and 2012 and treated by platinum-based chemotherapy were retrospectively evaluated. Expression of EGFR, oestrogen (ER), progesterone (PR), and cerbB2 (HER2) receptors were assessed immunohistochemically on paraffin-embedded tissues of these patients. Three phenotypic subtypes were defined according to ER, PR, and HER2 expression and associations of these with EGFR expression, clinicopathologic features, platinum sensitivity, and survival were investigated. Results: When we classified EOC patients into three subtypes, 63.4% had hormone receptor positive (HR(+)) (considering breast cancer subtypes, luminal A), 18.3% had triple negative, and 18.3% had HER2(+) disease. EGFR positivity was observed in 37 patients (45.1%) and was significantly more frequent with advanced disease (p=0.013). However, no significant association with other clinicopathologic features and platinum sensitivity was observed. HER2(+) patients had significantly poorer outcomes than HER2(-) counterparts (triple negative and HR positive patients) (p=0.019). Multivariate analysis demonstrated that the strongest risk factor for death was residual disease after primary surgery. Conclusions: Triple negative EOC may not be an aggressive phenotype as in breast cancer. The HER2 positive EOC has more aggressive behaviour compared to triple negative and HR(+) phenotypes. EGFR expression is more frequent in advanced tumours, but is not related with poorer outcome. Additional ovarian cancer molecular subtyping using gene expression analysis may provide more reliable data.Society of Cancer Research (Izmir, Turkey)This research was supported by grants from the Society of Cancer Research (Izmir, Turkey). We thank the Chairman of this society, Ugur Yilmaz, for his valuable support. We also thank the Department of Pathology, Izmir Ataturk Research and Training Hospital, for their valuable technical assistance