Laminin and fibronectin in rectal adenocarcinoma: Relationship to tumour grade, stage and metastasis

Abstract

Summary Using an immunoperoxidase procedure, we have examined the distribution of laminin and fibronectin in normal human large intestinal mucosa and in 50 cases of rectal adenocarcinoma for which extensive clinical follow up was available. In normal tissue, laminin staining was largely restricted to basement membranes, including that underlying the epithelial cells, whereas fibronectin was found in both basement membranes and surrounding connective tissue.In rectal carcinomas, basement membrane-like staining for laminin associated with tumour cells was found in only 27 out of the 50 cases studied. Statistical analysis showed that the presence of laminin-containing basement membranes was correlated with low histological grade (well-differentiated tumours), but not with stage (progression through the bowel wall and the development of lymph node metastases) and, in a highly significant way, with a reduced incidence of distant metastases and increased patient survival.Although fibronectin was found in tumour cell basement membranes where these were present, it was also found in the stroma of all 50 tumours. There was no apparent correlation between the presence of stromal fibronectin and grade, stage or development of metastases.

Collagen IV staining pattern in bladder carcinomas: relationship to prognosis

“…Furthermore, it must be stated that the quality of CIV staining was not altered in these conditions relative to less drastic ones, for non cancerous tissues, superficial or invasive tumours, although we occasionally noted that epithelial cytology was less clear. It is pointed out that these optimal conditions are similar to those used by different authors (Curran & Gregory, 1977;Burns et al, 1980;Eckblom et al, 1982;Kirkpatrick & d'Ardenne, 1984;Forster et al, 1984).…”

“…Therefore we abandoned the retrospective study and undertook a prospective study of ethanol-fixed paraffin embedded urothelial samples. Preliminary results (Daher et al, 1984) were encouraging; the quality of ethanol-fixed specimens was also noted by other groups on different tissues (Szendroi et al, 1983;Suzuki et al, 1984;Forster et al, 1984). The optimal conditions of enzymatic treatment had to be defined and, after trying papain, trypsin and pepsin in acetic or chlorhydric solution, we chose pepsin in HCI solution.…”

“…Conversely, almost all patients with CIV pattern II staining died by two years: 8 the first year with distant (5) or regional (2) metastasis or both (1); three more patients died the second At three years of evolution, the difference in survival as related to the CIV staining pattern was still highly significant (P<0.001) (Table II). For this statistical analysis, we used the Armitage-Cochran test (Table II) (Ingber et al, 1981), breast (Albrechtsen et al, 1981;Siegal et al, 1981), colon (Burtin et al, 1982;Forster et al, 1984), brain (McArdle et al, 1984), thyroid gland (Miettinen & Virtanen, 1984), melanomas (Natali et al, 1985) and laryngeal specimens (Visser et al, 1986).…”

“…In most non cancerous and superficial tumour samples, CIV could be unmasked after 1 h incubation with 0.2 or 0.4% pepsin while the other tumours needed 0.4% pepsin for 2 h. As we stated before, this fact could be explained technically by the different times of ethanol fixation of superficial and invasive tumours and their different structures. Similar problems were faced with colonic specimens and have been widely discussed by Forster et al (1984). We thus determined for all the specimens optimal conditions as 0.4% pepsin for 2h at 37°C.…”

“…Later, several groups studied basement membrane antigens in human tumours of different organs using immunohistological methods: Breast (Albrechtsen et al, 1981;Siegal et al, 1981), pancreatic gland (Ingber et al, 1981), colon (Burtin et al, 1982(Burtin et al, et 1983Forster et al, 1984), thyroid gland (Miettinen & Virtanen, 1984), brain (McArdle et al, 1984) melanomas (Natali et al, 1985) and recently laryngeal specimens (Visser et al, 1986), but no study has been reported on bladder tumours. Furthermore, Forster et al (1984) Immunoperoxidase method Antisera to CIV purified from the matrix of EHS sarcoma were raised in rabbits and the antibodies, which were kindly given us by J.M.…”