Oral Surgery, Oral Medicine, Oral Pathology and Oral Radiology
Expression of cornulin in oral premalignant lesions
Section snippets
Patient identification and sampling
This study was deemed exempt from review by the Ohio State University Institutional Review Board (protocol No. 2014 E0457) because it was a retrospective study of archived pathology specimens that were deidentified before analysis. An electronic database review of tissue archives of the Oral Pathology Consultants at the Ohio State University College of Dentistry was performed. Specimens diagnosed between the years 2010 and 2013 as NOM; mild, moderate, or severe epithelial dysplasia; carcinoma
Results
Summarized patient characteristics of age- and gender-matched cohorts are provided in Table I. IHC analysis using antibodies directed against cornulin showed strong cytoplasmic staining of the keratin, the granular layer (if present), and the spinous layer of the surface stratified squamous epithelium, whereas no staining was observed in the basal cell layer. NOM exhibited the most intense staining, and staining intensity decreased with increased grades of OED (LD > HD) and was minimal or
Discussion
We investigated the expression of cornulin in the oral mucosa and its potential utility as an adjunct in the assessment and histopathologic grading of OED. Cornulin expression demonstrated promise as a supplement to routine histopathologic assessment of oral potentially malignant lesions (OPMLs).
Our results showed progressive downregulation of cornulin in OED and OSCC compared with NOM, validating the findings of Xiao et al.27; however, those authors had examined microarray samples, whereas in
Conclusions
Cornulin expression in surface oral epithelium is progressively decreased with increasing grades of OED and OSCC. Cornulin expression was able to differentiate between LD and HD and could, thus, represent a potential biomarker for assessing the risk of progression in OPMLs. Longitudinal studies evaluating risk stratification based on cornulin expression may be warranted.
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Dr. Mark Lingen of the Department of Pathology, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, for his intellectual contributions.
Disclosure
This study was funded by The Ohio State University College of Dentistry's Seed Grant Program (project No. 21-100278); and was presented in part as an abstract at the Annual Meeting of American Academy of Oral and Maxillofacial Pathology, Cincinnati, OH, May 2016.
References (37)
- et al.
Epithelial dysplasia of the oral mucosa—diagnostic problems and prognostic features
Curr Diagn Pathol
(2006) - et al.
A follow-up study of sixty-one oral dysplastic precancerous lesions in Indian villagers
Oral Surg Oral Med Oral Pathol
(1977) - et al.
Intraexaminer and interexaminer reliability in the diagnosis of oral epithelial dysplasia
Oral Surg Oral Med Oral Pathol Oral Radiol Endod
(1995) - et al.
Novel human esophagus-specific gene c1 orf10: CDNA cloning, gene structure, and frequent loss of expression in esophageal cancer
Genomics
(2000) - et al.
Cornulin, a new member of the “fused gene” family, is expressed during epidermal differentiation
J Invest Dermatol
(2005) - et al.
Chromosome 1 open reading frame 10 (C1 orf10) gene is frequently down-regulated and inhibits cell proliferation in oral squamous cell carcinoma
Int J Biochem Cell Biol
(2005) - et al.
Evaluation of cornulin, keratin 4, keratin 13 expression and grade of dysplasia for predicting malignant progression of oral leukoplakia
Oral Oncol
(2010) - et al.
Quantitative proteomic analysis of microdissected oral epithelium for cancer biomarker discovery
Oral Oncol
(2015) - et al.
Evaluation of a new binary system of grading oral epithelial dysplasia for prediction of malignant transformation
Oral Oncol
(2006) - et al.
Immunohistochemical assessment of PTEN in vulvar cancer: best practices for tissue staining, evaluation, and clinical association
Methods
(2015)
Glutathione-degrading enzymes of microvillus membranes
J Biol Chem
Dipeptidase 1: a candidate tumor-specific molecular marker in colorectal carcinoma
Cancer Lett
Cancer Statistics, 2018
CA Cancer J Clin
Treatment and follow-up of oral dysplasia—a systematic review and meta-analysis
Head Neck
Oral leukoplakia and malignant transformation. A follow-up study of 257 patients
Cancer
Histologic grading of oral epithelial dysplasia: revisited
J Pathol
Prognosis of oral pre-malignant lesions: significance of clinical, histopathological, and molecular biological characteristics
Crit Rev Oral Biol Med
Update on oral epithelial dysplasia and progression to cancer
Head Neck Pathol
Cited by (0)
- 1
Present address: Department of Biomedical Sciences and Comprehensive Care & Department of Oral Pathology, Medicine and Radiology, Indiana University School of Dentistry, Indianapolis, IN, USA.