At present, some research efforts are focusing on the evaluation of a variety of tumor associated antigens (TAAs) for a better understanding of tumor biology and genetics of lung tumors. For this reason, we evaluated the tissue expression of carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) and ior C2 (a cell surface O-linked glycoprotein carbohydrate chain TAA) in lung carcinomas, as well as its correlation with a variety of clinicopathological features. The tissue expression of CEA was evidenced in 22/43 (51.16%) lung carcinomas and it was correlated with mitotic activity, cell pleomorphism indexes, and age of patients. The expression of ior C2 was observed in 15/43 (34.88%) tumors but no correlation with the clinicopathological features mentioned above was obtained. No correlation between both CEA and ior C2 antigens expression and the overall survival (OS) of non-small-cell lung cancer patients was also observed. However, CEA-negative patients displayed higher OS rates as compared with positive ones (69.74 versus 58.26 months). Our results seem to be in agreement with the role of CEA expression in tumor cell proliferation, inhibition of cell polarizations and tissue architecture distortion. The significance of ior C2 antigen in these malignancies and it potential use in diagnosis, prognosis, and/or immunotherapy must be reevaluated. 1. Introduction Lung tumors are one of the leading causes of cancer-related mortality around the world [1]. There are two main variants of the disease, non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and small-cell lung cancer (SCLC). However, NSCLC represents more than 80% of all lung carcinomas [2]. In patients with NSCLC, some genetic and regulatory abnormalities have been considered responsible for the tumor survival advantage. The alterations in gene expression that occur in cells during the malignant transformation usually conduce to the aberrant expression of antigens whether existing or not in normal cells. In this way, some research efforts are focusing on the evaluation of a variety of tumor associated antigens (TAAs) for a better understanding of tumor biology and genetics of lung tumors [3]. Carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) is a glycoprotein expressed during embryonic and fetal development. It is frequently expressed on the apical surface of gastrointestinal epithelium, although it can also be found in other human epithelium, including lung tissues [4, 5]. Serum expression of CEA has been considered a sensitive and valuable tumor marker for diagnosis, prognosis, and therapy monitoring in lung cancer [6, 7]. Nevertheless, up to now, the
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