الفهرس 
Immunohistochemical study of the expression of OCT- 4 in bladder urothelial carcinoma
TABLE OF CONTENTSOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
 |  | from | 120 |  |  |
| | | from | 120 | | |
Abstract
Bladder carcinoma is a significant problem in Egypt; being the 10th in the worldwide rank of incidence for both sexes. The disease is characterized by multifocality, multiple morphologies coexisting together and multiple recurrences after excision. A cancer stem cell model was proposed; that there is a subpopulation of tumour cells capable of resisting conventional therapies and surviving treatment to facilitate recurrence and metastasis. Oct-4 is a pluripotency marker of stem cells; which has been found to be associated with worse prognosis in multiple somatic tumours such as breast, brain, skin and thyroid. We tested 84 urothelial tumour specimens including all grades, stages and some variants of urothelial carcinoma for the expression of Oct-4. Two sections were prepared per case for histologic evaluation and immunohistochemical staining by Oct-4 monoclonal antibody. The immunostaining was evaluated semiquantitavely through obtaining an H-score for each case. All cases took up the Oct-4 stain except for low grade tumours and CIS cases. The highest percentage of positive cases was seen in variants of urothelial carcinoma (19.1%). Oct-4 expression was significantly associated with grade (p= 0.03), histopathologic type of urothelial tumour (p< 0.001), stage (p < 0.001), and tumour progression (p = 0.001). Conversely; the level of Oct-4 expression was not found to be associated with any of the studied parameters.Our study proves that Oct-4 is expressed in bladder urothelial carcinoma, and its presence regardless of the level of expression seems to play a role in guiding tumour grade, stage, progression and histopathological type; which calls for considering Oct-4 as a novel prognostic marker that could be implemented in target therapies for urothelial carcinoma