The Immunohistochemical Analysis of SOCS3 Protein Identifies a Subgroup of Prostatic Cancer Biopsies With Aggressive Behavior

Background: Recently, we demonstrated that hypermethylation of SOCS3 determines a significant reduction of its mRNA and protein expression and identifies a subgroup of prostate cancer with aggressive behavior. In this paper, our objective was to investigate whether the immunohistochemical expression of the SOCS3 protein could represent an alternative method to molecular analysis for the individualization of aggressive prostate carcinoma. Materials and Methods: We analyzed the SOCS3 immunohistochemical expression in 65 patients undergoing biopsies at the Institute of Urology of our hospital between September 2011 and October 2011 (median age, 66.4 y; range, 50 to 73 y), and in 35 cases, a subset of 65 cases originally used for the immunohistochemical study, we studied the methylation status of the SOCS3 promoter. Results: We found that the percentage of cases with SOCS3 negativity (-) or with SOCS3 weak staining in
Source: Applied Immunohistochemistry and Molecular Morphology - Category: Chemistry Tags: Research Articles Source Type: research