The Clinicopathological and Prognostic Impact of 14-3-3 Protein Isoforms Expression in Human Cholangiocarcinoma by Immunohistochemistry

The 14-3-3 proteins are highly conserved, ubiquitous molecules involved in a variety of biologic phenomena,such as cell cycle control, and apoptosis. However, their expression in cholangiocarcinoma has not been previouslycharacterized. In this paper, immunohistochemistry using specific anti-14-3-3 monoclonal antibodies wasperformed on formalin-fixed;, paraffin embedded archival tissue from 86 patients of cholangiocarcinoma. Wealso examined the correlation between expression and survival rate and clinicopathologic factors such as tumorlocation, tumor size, pathologic differentiation, lymphatic permeation, lymph node metastasis, and tumor stage.Positive 14-3-3 proteins expression was observed for 6 isoforms (β, σ, γ, θ, δ, η) of these proteins in 86 patientsof cholangiocarcinoma. β and σ isoform immunoreactivity was correlated with lymph node metastasis, tumorstage and patients’ survival rate. In addition, δ isoform immunoreactivity showed trends with tumor location,tumor size, pathologic differentiation and tumor stage, while the θ isoform was correlated with pathologicdifferentiation. These results indicated that upregulated expression of some isoforms of 14-3-3 may be a commonmechanism for evading apoptosis in cholangiocarcinoma, so that targeting 14-3-3 may be a novel promisingstrategy for the treatment of this tumor.