[Morphologic and molecular-genetic characteristics of keratinization and apoptosis in squamous cell lung carcinoma]

46 samples of squamous-cell lung carcinoma (SqCLC) from surgical patients were examined for biomolecular tumor markers (pancytokeratins, c-myc, p53, bcl-2, Bax, Ki-67, IGF-system) and apoptosis. Keratinization appeared an independent from apoptosis type of programmed cell death. It relates to cell death by differentiation, is followed by accumulation of c-fos, c-myc, Bax, IGF-II, IGFBP-2, IGFBP-5 this indicating their involvement in the regulation of this process. High level of apoptosis does not determine positive prognosis of the neoplastic process as it is not a single variant of programmed cell death in SqCLC. Malignant grade of SqCLC depends upon correlation between the proliferative processes and various types of cell death. Better prognosis of well and moderately differentiated SqCLC (as compared to poorly differentiated carcinomas) may be due to the fact that high proliferative activity of the tumor cells is balanced by their death by keratinization.