The prognostic significance of tumor-associated markers p53, HER-2/neu, c-myc, v-H-ras, PCNA and EGFr of local and distant recurrence in localized human prostatic adenocarcinoma

The intracellular expression of the gene products of tumor-associated markers p53, proliferative cell nuclear antigen (PCNA), HER-2/neu, c-myc, H-ras, and epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFr) in 86 cases of localized prostatic adenocarcinoma was investigated immunohistochemically in formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded tissue sections after pretreatment with a novel antigen retrieval buffer. A scoring system was devised to assess strength, pattern, and combined strength/pattern of immunostainings in the nucleus and cytoplasm for each immunomarker. The results were evaluated to determine whether overexpression of the gene products in the nucleus and cytoplasm was predictive of local and/or distant tumor recurrence and whether their expression was associated with known clinical prognostic factors. There was no significant relation between p53, PCNA, HER-2/neu, c-myc, and H-ras protein expression with risk of recurrence. EGFr expression showed a trend of increasing risk of tumor recurrence with higher composite score. Analysis of the association with other known prognostic factors in prostatic adenocarcinoma showed that PCNA was significantly correlated with tumor stage while H-ras and HER-2/neu were marginally correlated with prostatic acid phosphatase (PAP) and prostate-specific antigen (PSA) pretreatment serum levels, respectively. Together our findings suggest that overexpression of these intracellular oncoproteins in the tumor cells may not play an important role in determining whether prostatic tumors are likely to recur in localized prostatic adenocarcinoma.