Hatta, Naohito, Hirano, Takashi, Kimura, Tetsunori, Hashimoto, Ken, Mehregan, Darius R., Ansai, Shinichi, Takehara, Kazuhiko, and Takata, Minoru
Distinguishing basal cell carcinoma (BCC) from other benign and malignant skin tumors is sometimes a difficult task for the pathologists. Because the activation of hedgehog signals and the up-regulation of its critical transcriptional factorGli1are well documented in BCC, a molecular technique measuringGli1transcripts may aide the diagnosis.Gli1transcript levels were measured by real-time quantitative reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) using RNA extracted from formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded tissues of 68 cases of various skin tumors. Hematoxylin and eosin-stained pathology slides were independently reviewed by three expert dermatopathologists.The histological diagnoses were unambiguous in 53 tumors. The tumors included BCC (21), squamous cell carcinoma (13), seborrheic keratoses (8), trichoepithelioma (5), eccrine poroma/porocarcinoma (4), and sebaceous epithelioma/carcinoma (2). In these unambiguous cases, all BCC and trichoepithelioma tumors showed high expression ofGli1mRNA, while the expression was virtually absent in other tumors. The diagnosis was discordant among three pathologists in the remaining 15 tumors. Histological diagnoses included BCC, BCC with sebaceous differentiation, sebaceoma/sebaceous epithelioma, trichoblastoma, trichoepithelioma, basaloid follicular harmartoma, basosquamous carcinoma, etc. Six of them showed highGli1transcript levels.Quantification ofGli1transcripts by RT-PCR is helpful in discriminating BCC and trichoepithelioma from other skin tumors.Hatta N, Hirano T, Kimura T, Hashimoto K, Mehregan DR, Ansai S, Takehara K, Takata M. Molecular diagnosis of basal cell carcinoma and other basaloid cell neoplasms of the skin by the quantification ofGli1transcript levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]