Project description:Up-to-date, several molecular markers of prognosis have been studied in Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma (OSCC), but none entered in the clinical setting. Therapy of OSCC tumors mainly relies on surgery, radiotherapy and partially on chemotherapy; there is an urgent need for biomarkers able to better stratify OSCC patients' risk to address targeted therapeutic strategies. The role of immune response in the pathogenesis and biological behavior of OSCC has been investigated by several authors, and promising results have been obtained with immune checkpoint inhibitors. We already investigated the role of the immune modulator FK506-binding protein 51 (FKBP51), a FK506-binding immunophilin, in cutaneous melanoma biology, and its expression in several human solid tumors. In the present study, we aimed to assess the value of FKBP51 expression in OSCC tumor cells as a marker of outcome. We collected clinical data from 72 patients who underwent surgery for Squamous Cell Carcinoma (SCC) of the tongue, floor, lips and palate. FKBP51 expression was assessed by immunohistochemistry on paraffin-embedded tumor tissues. In addition, we evaluated the human papillomavirus (HPV) status of primary tumors by immunohistochemistry, viral subtyping and In Situ Hybridization (ISH) assay. We found that high FKBP51-expressing tumors characterized the OSCCs with the worst prognosis: the high immunohistochemical expression of FKBP51 associated with death occurring within five years from the diagnosis with a sensitivity of 88.46% and a specificity of 91.67%. The estimated positive predictive value of the test was 88.45% and negative predictive value 91.67%. We tested FKBP51 mRNA presence, by RT-PCR assay, in a selected series of OSCC tumors, and we found that mRNA correlated well to the protein expression and to the clinical outcome. Applying the Bayes formula, we estimated an 88% probability of dying within five years from the diagnosis of OSCC patients with a high FKBP51 immunohistochemical (IHC) test result (>51% of FKBP51 positive tumor cells). On the basis of our analysis, we propose tumor tissue expression of FKBP51 protein as a reliable prognostic marker for OSCC tumors.

Project description:Extracellular, cancer-specific methylated DNA has been shown to be a prognostic marker when detected in serum or plasma. In this study we investigated the effect of treating cancer cells with differentially methylated CpG DNA. When breast cancer cell lines were treated with methylated CpG DNA, a consistent upregulation of CHAC1 mRNA expression was observed. CHAC1 was recently described to be a novel component of the unfolded protein response pathway. To elucidate the role of CHAC1 mRNA expression in cancer in more detail, we analyzed expression of this gene in breast (n=107) and ovarian cancer (n=107) and found a strong correlation with tumor differentiation. Poorly differentiated tumors exhibited higher CHAC1 expression levels (p=0.004 for breast and p=0.031 for ovarian cancer). Additionally, hormone receptor (HR)-negative breast cancers (p<0.001) and advanced stage disease ovarian cancers (p=0.026) also demonstrated high CHAC1 mRNA levels. mRNA expression analysis of the two known CHAC1 isoforms showed a strong association of expression above the median with poor outcome in breast cancer patients in a multivariate analysis (isoform a: relative risk (RR) of death 3.2 (95% CI 1.6-6.5; p<0.01); RR of relapse 3.9 (95% CI 1.6-9.8; p<0.01); isoform b: relative risk (RR) of death 3.5 (95% CI 1.6-7.3; p<0.01); RR of relapse 6.6 (95% CI 2.4-18.5; p<0.01)). Univariate analysis in ovarian cancer showed that CHAC1 mRNA expression above the median was associated with a poor relapse free survival (p=0.03). In younger ovarian cancer patients (age < median age), a high CHAC1 mRNA expression was associated with overall survival (p=0.007) and relapse free survival (p=0.015). Finally, we show that downregulation of CHAC1 by small interfering RNA suppressed breast cancer cell migration and proliferation, whereas overexpression resulted in an observed increase in these cellular behaviours. This is the first report demonstrating that a gene (CHAC1) whose expression is triggered by methylated, but not unmethylated DNA, is involved in tumour biology. Human breast cancer cell lines (BT-20, Hs578T) were treated with methylated and unmethylated DNA oligos, and differentially expressed genes were identified between treatments with methylated and un-methylated oligos.

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Immunohistochemical Evaluation of FGD3 Expression: A New Strong Prognostic Factor in Invasive Breast Cancer.

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Immunohistochemical Evaluation of FGD3 Expression: A New Strong Prognostic Factor in Invasive Breast Cancer.

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