Expression of proliferating cell nuclear antigen in lung cancer: a systematic study and correlation with DNA ploidy

Heterogeneity of expression of the proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) was assessed immunohistochemically in 156 tissue samples from 33 surgically resected pulmonary carcinomas using the monoclonal antibody 19A2. The DNA content of each of these samples was measured by flow cytometry. Mean PCNA expression was higher in squamous carcinomas than in adenocarcinomas but there was marked intra-tumour variation in PCNA index in almost all cases. Intra-tumour heterogeneity of DNA content was noted in 11 cases. The PCNA index of these cases (34.1) was higher than that of DNA homogeneous cases (19.4). The wide variation in PCNA expression between different samples within a tumour would indicate that systematic sampling and counting will be necessary in future immunohistochemical studies of cell proliferation in tumour material.