Immunohistochemical expression of cyclooxygenase‐2 in skin cancers

Abstract

These results indicate that the intensity of COX-2 staining and its heterogeneous distribution are related to the degree of cellular differentiation and the various phenotypes of tumor cells, but the extent of COX-2 staining did not correlate with the degree of malignancy.

Different expression of cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) in selected nonmelanocytic human cutaneous lesions

“…Such a result is in general agreement with earlier reports of other groups which have described very low COX-2 expression in most BCCs (undetectable in others) [39,40] or undetectable COX-2 expression in the majority of cases with weak expression found only in a small fraction of the lesions investigated [34,35,37,41]. Taking into account the good reproducibility of our results for a large number of samples of normal skin, and the consistency of the results obtained for BCCs, it seems reasonable to conclude that the reports of undetectable COX-2 expression in smaller or larger fractions of the BCCs examined in earlier studies reflected insufficient sensitivity of the COX-2 detection rather than a lack of the protein in the BCC cells.…”

“…In our study, the precancerous lesions and SCCs expressed COX-2 at a similar level. Although some authors have reported stronger COX-2 staining in SCCs compared to KA [35,36] more groups have described similar (or only slightly higher) COX-2 expression in SCCs compared to precancerous lesions like AK, KA and BD [37][38][39][40][41].…”

“…Literature data on COX-2 expression in normal skin varies from reports of nondetectable expression levels [41], to the expression observed only in some cells of the granular and spinous layers of the epidermis [34,35,37] or restricted exclusively to the epidermal basal layer [39,40,42,43]. Leong et al [34] described an association between differentiation of human keratinocytes in vitro and expression of COX-2.…”

“…In the study by Putti et al [36], COX-2 expression was detected in 13 of 17 SCCs and eight of 24 KAs. Kagoura et al [37] examined 16 cases of BCC for the presence of the COX-2 protein and obtained immunostaining of six samples (two -strong, four -weak). The same authors reported slightly stronger COX-2 expression in ten of 13 cases of Bowen's disease (BD) and even stronger in 11 of 15 SCCs.…”

Cyclooxygenase-2 Overexpression in Non-Melanoma Skin Cancer: Molecular Pathways Involved as Targets for Prevention and Treatment

“…and 88% in BD, 50 and 83% in AK and it was of 25% in benign papillomas Kagoura et al, 2001;Kim et al, 2006). COX-2 over-expression has also been determined in mice models of skin abnormalities, such as hyperplasia of the skin, benign papillomas and SCC -resulting from UV chronic irradiation-.…”