Expression of the Epidermal Growth Factor and Tumor Necrosis Factor-alpha in Lung Cancer / 대한흉부외과학회지

BACKGROUND: Release of Epidermal Growth Factor(EGF) af fects the growth of the lung cancer in various ways and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha), which is known as acute immune reactants and now used in lung cancer t reatment, supress carcinogenesis of the lung. In this study, expression rates of EGF and TNF-alpha in the lung cancer tissue and the serum of lung cancer patients were measured. MATERIAL AND METHOD: In twenty cases of lung cancer and four cases of benign tumor or granuloma, all patient's peripheral blood was sampled pre, and postopertively, and tumor tissues and tumo r free lung tissues were obtained from resected surgical specimens in all patien ts. Then, all blood samples and tissues were frozen and kept safely in the liqui d nitrogen tank. Human EGF kit(Amersham pharmacia biotech, England) and TNF-alpha I RMA kit (Biosouce, Belgium) were used in quantitation of EGF and TNF-alpha respecti vely. RESULT: 1. Both EGF and TNF-alpha were expressed in all tissues and control tissue, benign tumor or granuloma tis sue, cancer tissue and pre- and postoperatively sampled serum. 2. The amount of EGF and TNF-alpha were significantly higher in cancer tissue than in control and be nign tumor tissues. 3. The expression of TNF-alpha was more potent in adenocarcinom a tissue. 4. The expressed amounts of serum EGF and TNF-alpha were 5.7 times and 1. 3 times higher than in tissue respectively. 5. The expression rates of TNF-alpha in cancer tissue was different according to histologic types of cancer but not dif ferent for EGF. 6. As TNM stages go up the amount of EGF in cancer tissue increa sed but TNF-alpha ecreased. 7. The amount of EGF in serum was increased at immediat e postoprative period but TNF-alpha was decreased. CONCLUSION: The presence of di fference in the expressed amount of EGF and TNF-alpha between cancer tissue and con trol tissue was proven, also the difference was found between tissue and serum r epresenting the concentration of EGF and TNF-alpha which were higher in serum than in tissues. EGF and TNF-alpha are released in all of normal tissue, benign tumor ti ssue and lung cancer tissue and their expression rates were variable according t o cell function. Further research is needed to for the expression of EGF and TN F-alpha in various kinds of cells.

Expression of bcl-2 , p53 Protein and Aggressiveness in Thymic Epithelial Tumor / 대한흉부외과학회지

BACKGROUND: The distinction between non-invasive and invasive or thymic carcinoma has been severely compromised by lack of objective morphological criteria. A reliable biological marker of tumor aggressiveness is, therefore, mandatory for predicting tumor behavior. MATERIAL AND METHOD: Thirty thymic epithelial tumors, including 7 non-invasive thymoma, 10 invasive thymoma, and 13 thymic carcinoma of the Rosai's classification; and 5 stage I, 7 stage II, 2 stage III, and 3 stage IVa of the Masaoka stage of thymoma were investigated for expression of bcl-2 and p53 proteins by immunohistochemistry. RESULT: The thymic epithelial cells showed positive immunostain for bcl-2 in 0 (0%), 3 (30%), 8 (61.5%) of categories in the Rosai's classification respectively and in 0 (0%), 1 (14.3%), 2 (100%), 0 (0%) of stage I, II, III, IVa of the Masaoka stage respectively. Thymic carcinoma, and high stage thymoma had significantly higher proportion of bcl-2 expression than thymoma (p=0.021) and low stage thymoma (p=0.011). However, p53 showed no correlation with the histological subtypes nor with clinical aggressiveness. Bcl-2 expression appeared to be positively correlated with p53 immunoactivity (p=0.007, kappa=0.525). CONCLUSION: These date indicate that bcl-2 expression correlates with aggressiveness in thymic epithelial tumors, but further studies on mutation of p53 protein is necessary because bcl-2 expression appeared to be positively correlated with p53 immunoactivity.