A lack of prognostic significance regarding ΔNp63 immunoreactivity in lung cancer

ΔNp63 is an isoform of the p53 homologue p63, which lacks an amino-terminal transactivation domain and antagonizes the induction of the gene expression by Δp63. The aim of this study was to detect the ΔNp63 expression in lung cancer using immunohistochemical (IHC) staining, and to evaluate the relationship between theΔNp63 expression level and the prognosis based on resected lung cancer tissues specimens from the of patients. We used immunohistochemistry to analyze the protein expression of ΔNp63 in paraffin-embedded tumor samples from 161 well-characterized squamous cell carcinoma patients and compared the expression level of ΔNp63, clinical variables and the survival outcome. Seventy-seven patients (47.8%) showed positive staining for ΔNp63 in the nuclei of tumor cells. No significant difference was observed between the ΔNp63 expression and the gender, age at operation, pathologic stage, pathologic T status, and pathologic N status. Based on the actuarial survival method, Kaplan-Meier method, and the log-rank test, the ΔNp63 expression was not associated with survival for lung cancer. Differences in survival remained insignificant even after lung cancer patients were stratified according to stage or differentiation. The prognostic effects of ΔNp63 expression do not appear to act as an important prognostic indicator in lung cancer. Our findings do not support that immunocytochemical markers demonstrate a relevant prognostic role in lung cancer.