Tissue Microarray Analysis Used To Evaluate Prognostic Significance Of The Related Markers In Soft Tissue Sarcoma

Objective:Tissue microarray (TMA) technology is a new method used to analyse several hundred tumor samples on a single slide.The purpose is to evaluate the expression of tumour marker with TMA in soft tissue sarcomas. To examine the reliability of tissue microarrays for detecting ki-67,p53,and PCNA in soft tissue sarcomas,TMA is compared to immunohistochemical(IHC) analysis to evaluate the expression of tumour marker.Method: Between January 2000 and September 2003, the 80 patients were analyzed in the current study. Clinicopathologic variables studied included tumor site, size, depth, histologic type, grade, and resection margin status. Treatment other than resection was not analyzed. Overexpression of Ki-67, p53,PCNA were determined via standard IHC techniques on serial paraffin sections and TMA.Continuous determination of the percentage of nuclear staining was also used for correlation with distant metastasis (DM) and tumor mortality (TM). Study endpoints included local and distant recurrence-free and diseases pecific survival rates, estimated by the Kaplan-Meier method. Univariate and multivariate analyses were performed using the log-rank test and the Cox proportional hazards modelRESULTS: The median follow-up was 33 months. 11 (13.75%) of the 80 patients developed DM. 10 of the 80 patients (12.5%) died of their disease. Factors found to be significant in univariate and multivariate analyses for both DM and TM were Ki-67 score, size, and PMM (all P values ,0.05). Overexpression of p53 did not correlate with increased risk of DM or TM alone.CONCLUSIONS: Positive microscopic resection margins significantly decrease the local recurrence-free survival rate for soft tissue sarcoma and independently predict distant recurrence-free survival rates and disease- specific survival rates for all patient subsets. Microscopic resection margins should be considered for inclusion in staging systems and treatment algorithms that address local recurrence.TMA detection of ki-67 p53 and PCNA is highly concordant with that of the original Immnohistchemical analysis .TMA is a reliable method for detecting protein expression.