Frequent high expression of bax pro-apoptotic protein in non-small cell lung cancer

Bax, bcl-2 and their homologues regulate a distal step in an evolutionary v ery well conserved pathway of apoptotic cell death. It plays a crucial role in the balance between proliferation rate and cell viability. Thus in the last pars the attention of the scientific community towards these proteins has remarkably increased, in particular in the oncologic field. We develope d an immunohistochemical assay allowing us to evaluate the bax expression i n formalin fixed and paraffin embedded lung cancer tissues to investigate b ax expression in a cohort of 55 patients affected by non-small cell lung ca ncer. We detected high expression of bax in 72.7% of our patients. When we statistically analyzed our data we did not find any correlation between bar expression and any clinicopathologic parameters (sex, age, TNM status tumo r grade, histological type). In conclusion, our study shows the frequent ov erexpression of bax, and this highlights the "apoptotic tendency" of cells during the neoplastic proliferation. But, the role of bar in non-small cell lung cancer pathogenesis still remains unclear and further studies of larg e numbers of patients, including different stage groups, are needed to bett er define the involvement of this protein in the complex mechanism of lung carcinogenesis.