K. Arai et al., Immunohistochemical investigation of S100A9 expression in pulmonary adenocarcinoma: S100A9 expression is associated with tumor differentiation, ONCOL REP, 8(3), 2001, pp. 591-596
S100 protein A9 is associated with myeloid cell differentiation and is also
expressed in some epithelia. However, there have been few studies on S100A
9 in specific types of carcinomas, except for squamous cell carcinoma (SCC)
because the expression in normal epithelia is limited to squamous epitheli
a. Recently, S100A9 gene expression has been detected in cultured human ade
nocarcinoma (AC) cells derived from various organs. In this study, we also
detected S100A9 gene expression in human pulmonary AC cell lines by reverse
transcription-polymerase chain reaction. Furthermore, using the monoclonal
antibody against S100A9, we carried out an immunohistochemical evaluation
of S100A9 protein expression in 70 cases of resected pulmonary AC and exami
ned the relation of S100A9 expression to tumor differentiation. S100A9 immu
nopositivity was 0/21 (0%) in well differentiated ACs, 12/30 (40%) in moder
ately differentiated ACs and 19/19 (100%) in poorly differentiated ACs, and
the poorly differentiated ACs showed a significantly greater positive reac
tion. The immunopositivity in the moderately differentiated ACs was marked
in specific cytologic subtypes. In the controls, conspicuous S100A9 immunop
ositivity was observed in pulmonary SCCs, regardless of the degree of diffe
rentiation, but not in adenomatous hyperplasia or normal surface epithelia.
These above results suggest that the S100A9 protein is also expressed in p
ulmonary AC and that the expression rate in pulmonary AC shows higher corre
lation in poorly differentiated carcinomas, in agreement with our recent re
sults regarding liver carcinoma. We believe S100A9 is also closely related
to the differentiation of carcinomas of glandular cell origin.