Tumor-associated alpha-2-macroglobulin in human melanomas

✍ Scribed by J. Matoska; T. Wahlstrom; A. Vaheri; J. Bizik; M. Grofova

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1988
• Tongue: French
• Weight: 622 KB
• Volume: 41
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0020-7136
• DOI: 10.1002/ijc.2910410307

✦ Synopsis

We and others have previously shown that human melanoma cell lines in culture synthesize alpha-2-macroglobulin (alM). We have now studied melanomas from 30 patients for the presence of a2M using the peroxidase anti-peroxidase technique on histologic sections from paraffin-embedded tissues and primary antibody raised against tumor-associated cr2M in rabbits. a2M was detected in 10 of the 30 melanomas studied. In all but 2 cases the presence of a2M was restricted to solitary tumor cells or to solitary foci of tumor tissue. In one case of melanoma almost all tumor cells were positive for uzM, while in the others between 20% and SOYO of tumor cells were positive. In all but one of the melanomas, the positivity was characteristic of epithelioid or large-cell type or was confined to this component in melanomas with more than one cell type. In 4 positive cases, differences in the extent of N ~Mcontaining tumor tissue were observed between primary tumor and metastases or metastases from different localizations, with equivocal trend. Clinical follow-up of the melanoma patients suggested that cx2M-positivity tends to correlate with an unfavorable prognosis.