T. Arai et al., PREFERENTIAL REDUCTION OF NM23-H1 GENE-PRODUCT IN METASTATIC TISSUES FROM PAPILLARY AND FOLLICULAR CARCINOMAS OF THE THYROID, Modern pathology, 8(3), 1995, pp. 252-256
The nm23 gene product is a possible mediator of cancer invasion and me
tastasis, and has been divided into two distinct gene products, NM23-H
1 and NM23-H2. It has been shown previously that expression of nm23-H1
messenger RNA is reduced in metastatic lymph nodes from patients with
papillary carcinoma of the thyroid (Am J Pathol 142:1938-1944, 1993).
Since mAb H1-229 specific for NM23-H1 is now available, we further ex
tended our study to examine the expression of nm23-H1 gene product in
various types of thyroid cancer (37 cases of papillary carcinoma, 42 c
ases of follicular carcinoma, 17 cases of anaplastic carcinoma, and 3
cases of medullary carcinoma). NM23-H1 was expressed in primary papill
ary and follicular carcinomas (14/15 and 21/22), but weakly or hardly
expressed in metastatic lymph nodes and metastatic bone marrow (6/23 a
nd 1/4) (P < 0.01). Expression of NM23-H1 was low or absent in anaplas
tic and medullary carcinoma (3/17 and 0/3) (P < 0.01).