Serological and Immunohistochemical Examination of NCC-ST-439 Antigen in Colorectal Cancer

Masakuni Onda, Yoshiyuki Ozawa, Tatsuya Honjo, Tadashi Okuda, Yoshinobu Sumiyama

Third Department of Surgery, School of Medicine, Toho University

We investigated serologically and immunohistochemically the correlation between positive area of immunoreactivity in NCC-ST-439 (ST-439) antigen and the degree of clinicopathological factors and examined its utility as a tumor-associated antigen of colorectal cancer. The colorectal cancer tissue was removed surgically from 200 patients with colorectal cancer in our department. For the immunohistochemical examination, the streptoavidin-biotin (SAB) method was conducted with a specific monoclonal antibody. For measuring of the positive area, we used the CAS 200 Image Analyzer. The rates of an immunohistochemical expression of ST-439 were 81.6% for the apical and intraluminal types and 18.4% for the cytoplasmic type. The expression of ST-439 and the positive area in differentiated adenocarcinoma were higher than in undifferentiated adenocarcinoma. There was a close correlation among staging, depth of invasion, tumor diameter and lymph node metastasis, liver metastasis, peritoneal dissemination and positive area and expression of ST-439 antigen. These results demonstrated that the grade of the positive area and expression of ST-439 antigen were strongly associated with malignancy and prognosis of colorectal cancer. It is suggested that ST-439 antigen is useful as a tumor marker for colorectal cancer.

Key words
colorectal cancer, NCC-ST-439, immunohistochemical staining, tumor marker, positive area

Reprint requests
Masakuni Onda Third Department of Surgery, School of Medicine, Toho University
2-17-6 Ohashi, Meguro-ku, Tokyo, 153-8515 JAPAN

Accepted
June 10, 1998

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