Immunohistochemical Study of p53 Protein in Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Park, Chang Soo; Lee, Jae Hyuk; Choi, Eun Soo; Lee, Ji Shin

Abstract

Esophageal cancer is the sixth most common cancer worldwide in males. A number of environmental factors, including the consumption of alcohol and tobacco, correlate with the development of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, but the precise mechanism by which these factors generate or promote the genetic events required for tumorigenesis have not been delineated. Mutated p53 gene is the most common genetic abnormality in human cancer and p53 overexpression is related with the established prognostic factors in breast cancer. In the present study, immunohistochemical study for mutant p53 gene product was performed in paraffin section of 41 esophageal squamous cell carcinoma to investigate the role of p53 gene in the process of esophageal tumorigenesis, and the prognostic significance of p53 gene was also evaluated. The positivity of p53 gene product was 73.2% of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma. The normal squamous epithelium adjacent to carcinoma revealed negative reaction, but dysplastic cells were positive for p53 gene product. There was significant correlation between p53 expression and smoking, but the positivity of p53 gene product did not correlated with histological differentiation, lymph node status and TNM stage statistically. These results suggest that mutation of p53 gene involves the process of tumorigenesis of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma and smoking may be a principal cause of p53 mutations.