Laminin-5 is a biomarker of invasiveness in cervical adenocarcinoma

Lam-5 immunohistochemistry was performed on archival specimens from 8 patients with uterine leiomyoma as a negative control group, 6 patients with endocervical gland hyperplasia, 6 patients with adenocarcinoma in situ, 6 patients with microinvasive adenocarcinoma and 24 patients with invasive adenocarcinoma.The expression of Lam-5 was not detected in normal mucosa, but was seen along the basement membrane in endocervical gland hyperplasia and adenocarcinoma in situ and was observed in the cytoplasm of tumor cells in microinvasive and invasive adenocarcinoma.We conclude that Lam-5 is a useful biomarker in the evaluation of invasiveness in cervical adenocarcinoma.The virtual slides for this article can be found here: http://www.diagnosticpathology.diagnomx.eu/vs/7316562925827381Although adenocarcinoma (AC) is rare, relative to squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), among uterine cervical cancers, the number of cases has increased in recent years, particularly in young women [1]. Like SCC, invasive AC is associated with high-risk human papillomavirus infection and arises from non-invasive precursors, namely cervical glandular intraepithelial neoplasia/adenocarcinoma in situ [2]. The distinction between AC and SCC is not only of academic interest since these glandular lesions present many problems for diagnostic cervical pathology. Many different types of benign glandular lesions of the endocervix increase the potential for cervical neoplasia [3]. However, the distinguishing features of AC and SCC have practical therapeutic and prognostic implications, since the survival of patients with AC is significantly poorer than that for patients with SCC. The high invasiveness of tumor cells is the main reason for poor prognosis in AC. Many factors affect the invasiveness of tumors. A wide variety of molecular markers have been evaluated as diagnostic tools in the identification of high-risk precursors of SCC and AC and the association with cell adhesion molecules has attracted attentio