ICAM-1 expression in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer treated with radiotherapy.

PURPOSE: To investigate the possible clinical relevance of ICAM-1 molecule in patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) treated with radiotherapy. METHODS: The expression of ICAM-1 was examined immunohistochemically on tissue specimens of 62 patients with pathologically confirmed NCSLC. The median age at diagnosis was 62 years (range 49-84) with a male predominance (87.8%). All patients had stage III disease at presentation. The median follow up was 15.5 months (range 7-44). Obtained expression data were weighted against clinical and pathological parameters. RESULTS: Thirty-seven patients (60%) had no ICAM-1 staining, 16 patients (26%) had weak staining, while 6 patients (10%) expressed moderate staining and only 3 patients (5%) showed strong ICAM-1 staining. Moderate and high expressions were mostly observed in adenocarcinomas and undifferentiated carcinomas (n=8), that are considered more aggressive than squamous cell carcinoma (n=1). The median overall survival (OS) was 15 months (range 11-20). There seemed to exist an inverse association between ICAM-1 expression and OS, since there was a trend in median survival in favor of no ICAM-1 expression (p=0.083). Moreover, in patients with no ICAM-1 expression, there was observed a statistically significant difference in OS, favoring the squamous cell subtype (p=0.006). Nevertheless, ICAM-1 expression did not confer any statistical significance regarding smoking status (p=0.128), metastatic potential (p=0.574) as well as with the site of metastasis (p=0.964). CONCLUSION: Our findings may serve as a helping resource for further investigations of ICAM-1 as a molecular marker that could characterize treatment response and survival of tumor subpopulations.

SLCO1B3 screening in colorectal cancer patients using High-Resolution Melting Analysis method and immunohistochemistry.

Personalized medicine has made some major advances in colorectal cancer, but new biomarkers still remain a hot issue as an emerging tool with potential prognostic and therapeutic potential. We investigated for SLCO1B3 gene alterations and protein expression in colorectal cancer, using the novel high-resolution melting analysis technique and immunohistochemistry. Formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tumor samples from 30 colorectal cancer patients were used. The screening for gene alterations was done by high-resolution melting analysis for all exons of SLCO1B3 gene. Organic anion-transporting polypeptide 1B3 protein expression was assessed by immunohistochemistry using the monoclonal mouse MDQ antibody. High level of polymorphism was observed in the SLCO1B3 gene. We identified three previously reported polymorphisms in exons 7, 12, and 14, 699G>A, 1557A>G, and 1833G>A, respectively. In the exon 5, one variant seems to correspond to an as yet unknown SLCO family member. The immunohistochemical study revealed that organic anion-transporting polypeptide 1B3 was expressed in 27/30 samples. Of great interest, the three samples, which were immunohistochemically negative, all appeared to accommodate mutations which lead to either early stop codons or other conformations of the tertiary protein structures affecting the antibody-epitope binding. The results of this study are of much interest as high-resolution melting analysis proved to be a reliable and rapid genotyping/scanning method for mutation detection of SLCO1B3 gene.