Abstract
Objectives: This study, aimed to evaluate the expression of COX-2 in renal cell carcinoma,
and correlate it with different patient clinicopathological data, emphasizing on the
role of COX-2 as a prognostic factor for renal cell carcinoma and to decide which
cases more likely benefit from the targeted therapy later on.
Patients and Methods: The present series consisted of tissue samples obtained from 47 patients (30 patients
were males and 17 were females). All the tumor samples were collected from the Pathology
Department, Faculty of Medicine, Alexandria University during the period from July
2009 to November 2010. Archival paraffin-embedded renal cell carcinoma tissue samples
were used to prepare tissue microarray blocks for immunohistochemical staining with
COX-2 antibody. Marker expression was categorized for statistical analysis then correlated
to clinicopathological variables.
Results: The histological types was significantly associated with COX-2 expression, with higher
expression being more common in papillary and chromophobe renal cell carcinoma, the
majority of these two types were in score 1 and 2 while majority of clear cell renal
cell carcinoma had score 0 and 1.
Conclusion: The association of COX-2 marker was related to the histologic type of tumor; COX-2
expression study might provide prognostic information regarding tumor aggressiveness.
These findings suggested a potential impact of COX-2 targeted therapy in the treatment
of renal cell carcinoma with overexpressed COX-2 that needs further investigation.
Key-words:
renal cell carcinoma - COX-2 expression - immunohistochemistry - tissue microarray
- prognosis.
