| Thymoma is a rare kind of tumor originating from the thymic epithelial cells. The clinical rarity, the specificity of morphological characteristics and the disunity of biological characteristics lead to various controversy in the pathologic classification, clinical staging, therapeutic modalities and prognosis. Now the frequent used standard of the pathologic classification and clinical staging is WHO pathologic classification and Masaoka clinical staging. Besides, it is reported that 15-60% thymoma patients is with MG clinically. Thus, to search a key molecular which express differently on different thymomas may help study different thymoma subtypes and the association of thymoma and my asthenia gravis.TIM-1 is the first found member of the TIM family. Experiments confirmed that TIM-1 expressed on CD4+T cells and provide total stimulus signal to the activation of T cells and participate in T cell proliferation and differentiation. At the same time, research has shown that there is a close relationship among TIM-1 and various autoimmune diseases and tumors. So, the study of TIM-1 may creat a new orientation for thymoma and myasthenia gravis.ObjectiveTo investigate the expression of TIM-1 in thymoma, thymic carcinoma and thymoma with and without MG, and its clinical significance, to explore the possible role of which TIM-1 can play in the development of thymic carcinoma, looking for a reliable molecular markers that can distinguish between the nature of thymic tumors, and provide the basis for new targeted therapy mode as TIM-1 malignancies applications in thymic.MethodsSelect the 58 cases of patients with thymoma which were admitted in Thoracic Surgery, Tianjin Medical University General Hospital from January 2012 to January 2014. All the 58 cases with no preoperative chemotherapy and radiation therapy or other treatments.58 patients,24 men and 34 women with a mean age of 48.4 ±2.3 years (18-67 years old).26 cases of all the patients with myasthenia gravis. All pathological specimens were reclassified according to the World Health Organization (WHO) the pathological classification criteria and Masaoka clinical staging classification. To detect the expression of TIM-1 with Immunohistochemical methods in thymoma thymic carcinoma and thymoma with and without MG, and analyze the final data.Results(1) The positive expression rate of TIM-1 in thymoma carcinoma is significantly higher than the expression in thymoma, and the difference is statistically significant (P＜0.05).(2) The TIM-1 expression in thymus tumors is associated with the World Health Organization (WHO) pathological classification, and has no significantly association with thymoma’s Masaoka clinical stage.(3) The positive expression rate of TIM-1 in MG associated thymoma is significantly higher than the expression in thymoma without MG, and the difference is statistically significant (P＜0.05). And the positive expression rate of TIM-1 is associated with MG’s Osserman classification.Conclusion(1) Positive expression of TIM-1 is obviously different in WHO classification of thymoma and thymic carcinoma, which indicating that TIM-1 is a good molecular markers to identify thymoma and thymic carcinoma.(2) The positive expression rate of TIM-1 in MG associated thymoma is significantly higher than the expression in thymoma without MG, which indicating that there is not only close relationship between TIM-1 and thymoma, but also TIM-1 and myasthenia gravis. And the positive expression rate is associated with Osserman classification of MG, suggests that TIM-1 may has close relationship with MG.(3) It is important for patients with thymoma to look for an effective therapeutic targets for targeted therapy. Further study on thymoma of TIM-1 maybe an important research orientation in future. |
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