Bax expression in benign and malignant thyroid tumours: Dysregulation of wild-type p53 is associated with a high bax and p21 expression in thyroid carcinoma

The purpose of our study was to determine the expression of the pro-apoptot ic BAX protein in relation to the mutational status of BAX and p53 las tran scriptional activator of the BAX gene) in benign and malignant thyroid tiss ue, In 47 patients with thyroid tumours (14 follicular and 3 papillary carc inomas, 14 adenomas and 16 goitres), the DNA was screened for mutations of BAX (exon 1-6) and p53 (exon 5-8) by single-strand conformation polymorphis m polymerase chain reaction (SSCP-PCR), Furthermore, the protein expression of BAX, p53 and p21 (which is also increased transcriptionally by p53) was investigated by immunohistochemistry, Surprisingly, we observed elevated B AX levels in patients with thyroid carcinomas compared with patients with a denomas (unpaired t-test: p <0.05) or with goitres (p <0.02). This is in cl ear contrast to other carcinomas where BAX is frequently inactivated which correlates to a poor prognosis (Sturm et al,, 1999), There were no signific ant differences of the BAX levels between goitres or the adenomas, In the S SCP-PCR analysis, no BAX mutations were detectable. P53 mutation analysis b y SSCP-PCR did not reveal any functional p53 mutations in the patients with carcinomas, adenomas or goitres, Nevertheless, patients with carcinomas sh owed an overexpression (preferentially cytoplasmic) of p53 protein compared with patients with benign tumours (p <0.05), The absence of p53 mutations suggests that the overexpressed p53 is wild type. This is in line with the expression profile of BAX and p21, which showed a higher protein expression in these p53 positive tumours (p <0.05 in the carcinomas compared with the non-malignant lesions). Consequently, the overexpressed p53 might be a cor relate for dysregulation without loss of function. This, in turn, might be a reason for the good outcome of some patients with thyroid cancer. (C) 200 1 Wiley-Liss, Inc.