1Department of Pathology, College of Medicine, The CatholicUniversity of Korea, Seoul, Korea. 2Department of Obstetrics, College of Medicine, The CatholicUniversity of Korea, Seoul, Korea. 3Department of Gynecology, College of Medicine, The CatholicUniversity of Korea, Seoul, Korea.
Published online: August 31, 2001.
ABSTRACT
PURPOSE: We investigated the expressions of E- Cadherin and p53 in soft tissue tumors to determine their significance in sarcoma development and/or progression and to assess their potential correlation with epithelial features.
MATERIALS AND METHODS: A total of 79 soft tissue sarcomas, including 10 tumors comprising epithelial components, were studied immunohistochemically in paraffin-embedded tissue sections. Further analysis was performed on 61 tumors by the application of a polymerase chain reaction technique and a direct sequence analysis procedure applied to exons 5 through 8 in the p53 gene.
RESULTS: E-Cadherin was expressed at the cell-cell boundaries in 8 (10%) tumors: 5 of grade 2 and 3 of grade 3.
Of these, six (being 60% of the total of 10 tumors containing epithelial elements) contained and two did not contain histologic evidence of epithelial differentiation.
Overexpression of p53 was detected in 26 (33%) samples, 7 of which demonstrated mutations in the p53 gene. No association was established between E-Cadherin immunoreactivities and p53 abnormalities. Tumor grade was found to be strongly correlated with p53 alterations (p=0.01) but not with E-Cadherin expression (p=0.09).
CONCLUSION: These data confirm a role for altered p53 in the pathogenesis of soft tissue sarcomas and suggest a possible role for E-Cadherin in the maintenance of epithelial architecture in these tumors regardless of p53 status.
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