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. 2009 Mar 26:9:93.
doi: 10.1186/1471-2407-9-93.

QPRT: a potential marker for follicular thyroid carcinoma including minimal invasive variant; a gene expression, RNA and immunohistochemical study

Nora Hinsch  1 , Matthias Frank, Claudia Döring, Christian Vorländer, Martin-Leo Hansmann
Affiliations

QPRT: a potential marker for follicular thyroid carcinoma including minimal invasive variant; a gene expression, RNA and immunohistochemical study

Nora Hinsch et al. BMC Cancer. .

Abstract

Background: The differential diagnosis between follicular thyroid adenoma and minimal invasive follicular thyroid carcinoma is often difficult for several reasons. One major aspect is the lack of typical cytological criteria in well differentiated specimens. New marker molecules, shown by poly- or monoclonal antibodies proved helpful.

Methods: We performed global gene expression analysis of 12 follicular thyroid tumours (4 follicular adenomas, 4 minimal invasive follicular carcinomas and 4 widely invasive follicular carcinomas), followed by immunohistochemical staining of 149 cases. The specificity of the antibody was validated by western blot analysis

Results: In gene expression analysis QPRT was detected as differently expressed between follicular thyroid adenoma and follicular thyroid carcinoma. QPRT protein could be detected by immunohistochemistry in 65% of follicular thyroid carcinomas including minimal invasive variant and only 22% of follicular adenomas.

Conclusion: Consequently, QPRT is a potential new marker for the immunohistochemical screening of follicular thyroid nodules.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Unsupervised clustering of 4 follicular adenomas (FTA), 4 minimal invasive follicular carcinomas (FTC) and 4 widely invasive FTC. The clustering was performed with 3830 genes. Adenomas cluster to one group, which is surprisingly located between widely and minimal invasive follicular carcinomas. One of the widely as well as the minimal invasive follicular carcinoma is located in the each other group. Red: FTA, green: widely invasive FTC, blue: minimal invasive FTC
Figure 2
Figure 2
Representative picture of immunohistochemical staining of FTC (A-C) and FTA (D-F). Carcinoma tissue displays a cytoplasmatic staining of the tumour cells, while adenoma tissue remains unstained.
Figure 3
Figure 3
qRT-PCR (A) and western blot analysis (B) of the 3 FTA and FTC presented in figure 2. In qRT-PCR, carcinomas reveal a relative quantity of QPRT-RNA expression between 3,65 and 25,18. The relative quantity of QPRT-RNA expression in adenomas is between 0,13 and 1,00. In western blot analysis, FTC reveal a strong band at 34 kD, while follicular adenomas lack any band. Blotting with actin was performed as loading control. Ad: Adenoma; Ca: Carcinoma.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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