Abstract

Molecular carcinogenesis model in colorectal cancer was proposed by Vogelstein in 19B9, that is, the accumulation of a series of genetic alterations results in malignant transformation from normal epithelium. Among them, p 53 gene mutation is known to take place in late stage, and is detected in more than 70% of colorectal cancers. Also, it was suggested that genetic alteration of p53 gene was related to worse prognosis in colorectal cancer patients. On the other hand, it is controversial still now whether p53 oncoprotein expression have relation with poor prognosis in colorectal cancers or not. So, we studied the p53 protein expression in l39 case of colorectal cancer patients who underwent curative surgical resection in Korean Cancer Center Hospital from Jan. 1984 to Dec. 1988 with immunohistochemical technique using Pab 1801, which is monoclonal antibody to p53 protein. We also analyzed the relevance between p53 protein expression and the conventional prognostic parameters. The positive rate of p53 protein expression was 43.9%. We didn't find any relevance between positive p53 protein expression and the conventional prognostic parameters except significantly lower expression rate in mucinous carcinoma(p=0.02). And, we could not detect any prognostic significance of p53 protein expression in resectable colorectal cancer patients. In conclusion, nuclear p53 protein expression by immunohistochemistry is considered to have no prognostic impact in resectable colorectal cancer patients. and we suggest that further study shou1d be going on including multiple genetic alteraions, and cytoplasmic p53 protein expression to detect the factors influencing on prognosis.

• Keywords: Colorectal cancer, Tumor suppressor gene, p53 gene, Prognostic parameter