Imunoexpressão dos marcadores de células-tronco CD44 e CD133 no câncer gástrico primário e metástases linfonodais

Abstract

Gastric cancer is the fourth most common cancer worldwide, accounting for the second leading cause of cancer mortality. Despite treatment with surgery and chemotherapy, the overall five-year survival of patients with gastric cancer remains low. One possible explanation for the ineffectiveness of therapy is the presence of cancer stem cells, a subpopulation of tumor cells that have stem cell characteristics. It has been reported that these, as well as embryonic stem cells, are immortal, can self-renew and to differentiate to be transformed in any cell type in the body. Several markers, including CD44 and CD133, have been reported as stem cell markers in both normal and cancerous cells and have been used to isolate cancer cells from solid tumors. The aim of this study was to evaluate the expression of CD44 and CD133 in primary gastric cancer and lymph node metastases by immunohistochemical and to relate it to clinicopathologic variables as histological type, gender, age, anatomical site, tumor size, angiolymphatic invasion, infiltration perineural, TNM classification (TN) and lymph node involvement. This study was developed from a set of 72 cases of gastric adenocarcinoma, from the Archives of Pathology and Forensic Medicine of the Federal University of Ceará Service (DPML-UFC). Tissue microarray and immunohistochemistry were utilized, with anti-CD44 monoclonal antibody and polyclonal anti-CD133. The cases with one or more cells with cytoplasmic and / or membrane immunostaining were considered positives. It was observed that 30% of the samples were positive for CD44. No statistically significant differences were found between the clinical and pathological variables studied and the immunoreactivity of CD44. Regarding the immunoreactivity of CD133, the present study showed that 24% of samples were positive. The degree of tumor invasion presented data showing a statistically significant trend (p = 0.0505), in reverse. The other variables, we found no statistically significant difference. The immunoreactivity of CD133 in histologically normal mucosa was higher than in the primary tumor and intestinal metaplasia, with statistically significant difference (p = 0.0159 and p = 0.0058, respectively). The CD133 immunostaining in intestinal type gastric carcinoma was significantly higher than in the histologically normal mucosal metaplasia (p = 0.0260). The frequency of expression of these markers is highly variable, and even in the samples considered positive, the stained cells percentage is also variable, and very low overall.