IMMUNOHISTOCHEMICAL EXPRESSION OF p53 AND BCL-2 PROTEINS IN ADVANCED ESOPHAGEAL CANCER PATIENTS

The current challenges in the management of esophageal cancer are to obtain a betterunderstanding of underlying molecular alterations to provide new treatment options. we studied the p53and bcl-2 protein expression in esophageal carcinomas to correlate molecular alterations withclinicopathological findings. tissue samples of 37 patients with advanced esophageal carcinoma wereanalyzed by immunohistochemical techniques. positive immunostaining for p53 and bcl-2 wereobserved in 67.6% and 43.6% of tumor samples, respectively. the prevalence of bcl-2 overexpressionwas significantly greater in p53+ tumors as compared with p53- tumors (p = 0.003). unlike p53,positive bcl-2 immunostaining correlated significantly with tumor type (p = 0.001) and histologicaldifferentiation (p = 0.007). our data also showed that 35% of patients were positive for both proteinsand 32.4% of patients were positive for p53 but negative for bcl-2 expression. these results indicatetwo types of double gene alterations that obviously would affect tumor biology and response tochemotherapy. therefore, it is advisable to determine expression profile of certain genes including p53and bcl-2 in tumor samples before selecting chemotherapy regimen.acta medica iranica, 43(5): 313-322; 2005