Abstract

Gallbladder carcinoma is a relatively aggressive and frequently lethal cancer. It is defined as a clinicopathological presentation including a wide spectrum of lethal disease from simple gallstones to dysplasia, to carcinoma in situ and invasive carcinoma. MUC1, a cell surface antigen expressed in glandular epithelia, is overexpressed and aberrantly glycosylated in adenocarcinoma. In this report, the immunohistochemical and immunofuorescence expression of MUC1 was studied in formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded surgical specimens from patients with gallbladder carcinomas. In T2 tumor, 48.3% cases showed weak expression and 51.7% showed moderate expression. In T3 tumors, expression was weak in 23.1 %, moderate in 46.2% and strong in 30.8% of cases. In T4 tumors, 9.1% cases showed weak, 40.9% moderate and 50% strong expression of MUC1. We have shown that early gallbladder cancer pathology may involve MUC1 in the disease progression. We have defined the localization of expression of the MUC1 genes during GBC development and correlated them with expression and its stage dependent nature.

Key words: Gallbladder carcinoma, metastasis, membrane protein, cancer diagnosis.