B. Passlick et al., IMMUNOHISTOCHEMICAL DETECTION OF P53 PROTEIN IS NOT ASSOCIATED WITH APOOR-PROGNOSIS IN NON-SMALL-CELL LUNG-CANCER, Journal of thoracic and cardiovascular surgery, 109(6), 1995, pp. 1205-1211
Immunohistochemical detection of the p53 gene product by monoclonal an
tibodies has been shown to be associated with a poor clinical outcome
in carcinomas of the breast and stomach, Because the prognostic releva
nce of p53 immunostaining in lung cancer is still under debate, we stu
died the expression pattern and clinical significance of such staining
in 73 patients with operable non-small-cell lung cancer, p53 expressi
on was detected on frozen sections with the use of monoclonal antibody
p1801, which recognizes both the wild-type and mutant gene product (a
lkaline phosphatase-anti-alkaline phosphatase method), A tumor was con
sidered p53 positive if more than 1% of the tumor cells were stained,
The p53 expression pattern was compared with clinicopathologic paramet
ers, and analysis of follow-up, based on the data of 65 patients, was
done by a log rank test (median observation time, 780 days), Nuclear p
53 staining was detected in 33 of 73 non-small-cell lung cancers (45.2
%), Comparison with clinicopathologic parameters demonstrated that the
p53 protein was detected more frequently in younger patients (younger
than 50 years, p = 0.014), whereas no correlation was found with sex,
tumor differentiation, tumor histologic type, or TNM stage, Surprisin
gly, follow-up analysis revealed that p53 staining was associated with
an increased rate of disease-free survival, especially in patients wi
th early stage tumor disease (p = 0.004) and in male patients (p = 0.0
23), Counter to previous studies in other solid tumors, immunocytochem
ical detection of p53 expression does not predict a poor clinical outc
ome in non-small-cell lung cancer, In early-stage lung cancer it might
be associated with an improved disease-free survival, which suggests
that the majority of the detected protein inherits the wild-type tumor
suppressor function.