Expression of the apoptosis-suppressng protein bcl-2 in neuroblastomas

ABSTRACT

This work was carried out to evaluate the role of bCl-2 proto-oncogene in assessing the prognosis of neuroblastoma by correlating its degree of expression with some of the important parameters affecting prognosis such as the degree of differentiation and mitosis- karyorrhectic index [MKI]. The mean value of MKI was significantly higher in neuroblastoma group than in both ganglioneuroblastoma and ganglioneuroma with a direct linear correlation. BC1-2 was expressed in 24 studied cases with decreasing grade of differentiation. The mean value of bCl-2 score was significantly higher in neuroblastoma group than the other two groups with a significant linear correlation with decreasing grades of differentiation and high MKI values, respectively. So, bCl-2 expression seems to confer a growth advantage of tumor cells and together with histology yield more prognostic information than histology alone