An Immunohistochemical Study of Oncogene Interaction in Skin Tumors

Hur, Hoon; Ahn, Jin Gyun; Ro, Young Suck; Kim, Jae Hong

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Alteration of a wide variety of cellular oncogerms have now been implieated in the causation of many human cancers. However, genetic studies have indicated that an abnormality of a single gene is usually insufficient to elicit the fug transformed phenotype and that two or more genetic leaions may be necessary for this to occur. OBJECT: The purpose of this study is to examine the possibity of oncogene interaction which might be involved in the pathogenesis of human skin tugois.
METHODS
The expression of the epidermal growth factor rattor(EGFR), c-jun protein, c-fos protein and p53 protein was assessed in frozen and corresgoAhng paraffin-embedded sections of 37 separate skin lesions (6 actinic keratoses, 6 squamo is ell carcinomas and 25 basal cell carcinomas using immunohistochemistry.
RESULTS
Substantial number of the p53 positive cases were negative for c-fos, in contrast to normal tissue, which was p53 negative and c-fos positive. The negative correlation between p53 and c-fos staining was statistically significant(P<0.005).
CONCLUSION
Although p53 appeared to have lost its normal role of regulatory early S phase protein in some lesions, in others high levels of p53 were assocated with underexpression of c-fos, reflecting the diversity of c-fos oncogene and the possible down regulation of c-fos expression by high levels of p53 protein.