Immunohistochemical Expression of Estrogen Receptor in Pulmonary Adenocarcinoma

Abstract

Estrogen receptor (ER) is a useful immunohistochemical marker of breast carcinomas and is commonly used as a means of distinguishing breast carcinomas from adenocarcinomas of other primary sites, including the lung. Previous reports have yielded conflicting data regarding ER immunoreactivity in primary pulmonary adenocarcinomas. In this study the immunohistochemical expression of ER was evaluated in 55 primary lung adenocarcinomas using the 1D5 antibody clone. Immunohistochemistry for thyroid transcription factor-1 (TTF-1), a sensitive and specific marker of pulmonary adenocarcinomas, was also performed. ER expression was observed in 10 (18%) of 55 lung adenocarcinomas. Most of these pulmonary adenocarcinomas showed ER immunoreactivity of weak or moderate intensity (<25% of tumor cell nuclei). However, two cases exhibited strong ER immunoreactivity (51-75% of neoplastic cells). Forty-six (84%) of the 55 lung adenocarcinomas were TTF-1 positive, including all those that expressed ER. These results indicate that a subset of pulmonary adenocarcinomas can exhibit ER immunoreactivity. As such, caution should be exercised in the use of ER immunohistochemistry alone as a means of distinguishing breast carcinomas from lung adenocarcinomas. In the context of an ER-positive lung neoplasm, strong and extensive TTF-1 immunoreactivity can be regarded as strong supportive evidence for a primary bronchogenic adenocarcinoma.

Breast-specific expression of MGB1/mammaglobin: an examination of 480 tumors from various organs and clinicopathological analysis of MGB1-positive breast cancers

“…However, the positive reaction is very distinct and is easily observed even with a small number of MGB1-expressing cells. Primary lung adenocarcinomas may be positive for ER, [23][24][25] but MGB1 expression was not detected in ERpositive lung adenocarcinomas. Therefore, expression of MGB1 in addition to positive ER highly indicates metastasis from breast cancer.…”

A study of immunohistochemical differential expression in pulmonary and mammary carcinomas

“…[48][49][50] The variability in the detection rates may be attributed to different clones, dilutions of primary antibodies, and antigen retrieval techniques among the studies. ER expression in the lung adenocarcinoma by using the monoclonal antibodies 1D5 and 6F11 and recent antigen retrieval techniques is much less variable with the rate ranging between 0 and 18% [51][52][53][54] although an exception exists where its expression by using 6F11 was reported in 56% of bronchioloalveolar carcinoma and 80% of invasive adenocarcinoma. 55 In our study, only one case showed focal ER expression, and none of the lung adenocarcinomas showed more than focal ER expression.…”

Estrogen Receptors Β — New Target in Cellular Lung Cancer Treatment

“…Сведения о содержании ЭРα в опухолевой ткани НМРЛ противоречивы: по разным данным, ЭРα-позитивными являются от 0 до 75% опухолей [7,10,13,[23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37].…”