| Research Abstract |
First, we made TMA containing 976 cases of lung cancers and confirmed its validity by comparing the results obtained by the TMA with those by regular slides or mRNA expression experiments.
Using TMA from 241 lung cancer patients, we analyzed expression of p53, p27, RB, EGFR, Bcl2, Synaptophysin, CD56 and TTF1 for their potential prognostic implication. However, only TTF1 showed a marginal prognostic impact among these markers.
Thyroid transcription factor (TTF) 1 was expressed throughout the developmental stage of peripheral lung as well as 72% of pulmonary adenocarcinoma, suggesting that TTF1 could serve as a lineage marker of the peripheral lung. In contrast, expression of maspin, which is thought to be involved in motility or invasion of cancer cells, is inversely correlated with TTF1 expression, suggesting that this molecule is related to development of central airway.
14-3-3sigma expression was examined in a spectrum of neuroendocrine lung tumors. Most of the tumors belonging to all the four categories of neuroendocrine lung tumors (i.e., carcinoid, atypical carcinoid, neuroendocrine large cell carcinoma, small cell carcinoma) lost expression of 14-3-3sigma in neuroendocrine differentiation.
In summary, TMA allowed us rapid evaluation of expression of a given protein in many samples in the same experimental condition, which was very useful for analysis of molecular pathogenesis of lung cancer.
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