Análise da proteína de choque térmico 27 (HSP27) em carcinomas de células escamosas de língua oral

Abstract

Oral tongue squamous cell carcinoma (OTSCC) presents high rates of morbidity and mortality. New methods of early detection and risk assessment have being studied aiming to predict the prognosis of patients and directing a differentiated treatment. In this context, several molecular biomarkers have been investigated for this purpose among them the heat shock protein 27 (HSP27). This study aimed to analyze whether HSP27 has some influence on the OTSCC, in addition to correlating its immunoexpression with clinicopathological parameters and patient survival. The sample consisted of 55 cases of OTSCC and 20 specimens of oral normal mucosa. For the histomorphological study, it was used the malignancy grading systems proposed by WHO in 2005, by Brandwein-Gensler et al. (2005) and by Almangush et al. (2014). The expression of HSP27 was evaluated through the Immunoreactive Scoring System (IRS). To verify the association of HSP27 immunopositivity with the clinicopathological parameters, it was used the Pearson’s chi-square and Fisher’s exact test. The curves for survival analysis were performed using the Kaplan Meier method. For all evaluations, the significance values were set at p<0.05. A higher IRS for the oral normal mucosa was observed when compared to OTSCC cases (p<0.001), indicating that there is a reduction of expression of this protein in these neoplasms, despite this finding is documented in the literature, the involved mechanisms are unclear, so, specific molecular studies are needed to elucidate the genetic and epigenetic events involved in the reduction of HSP27 expression in OTSCC cases. No significant associations were found between the immunostaining of this protein and the clinicopathological parameters and patient survival suggesting that this protein does not seem to influence the prognosis of OTSCC patients.