Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 16, 2026
Automated Multiplex Immunofluorescence Panel for Immuno-oncology Studies on Formalin-fixed Carcinoma Tissue Specimens
Published on: January 21, 2019
Evaluation of combined telomerase and c-myc expression in non-small cell lung carcinomas using tissue microarrays and
E Tsiambas1, A Stamatelopoulos, N Baltayiannis
1Department of Pathology, Tissue Microarrays and Computerized Image Analysis Lab, „NIMTS” Hospital, Athens, Greece.
Purpose:
Telomerase activation plays a crucial role in tumorigenesis by sustaining cellular immortality. It consists of two main components which include a RNA subunit (h-TERC) and a catalytic protein subunit (h-TERT). Similarly, amplification or deletion correlating with overexpression of c-myc is a common event in various neoplasias, including non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC). Because c-myc activates telomerase by inducing expression of its catalytic subunit, our aim was to correlate the expression of these two proteins with the biological behavior in NSCLC.
Materials And Methods:
Using tissue microarrays technology (TMA) we evaluated by computerized image analysis (CIA) the results of h-TERT and c-myc immuno-histochemistry (IHC) in 40 NSCLCs, which were cored and re-embedded into one TMA block.
Results:
Co-overexpression (moderate or high levels of NLI: Nuclear Labeling Index) of h-TERT and c-myc was observed in the majority of cases and found to be statistically significant (p=0.001). The results showed also strong association between c-myc and h-TERT overexpression correlating with stage (p=0.001 for both of them), but not with grade (p=0.206 and p=0.313, respectively).
Conclusion:
Our combined study showed that there is a strong correlation between the activation and expression of these two genes and maybe this co-deregulation could be used as a prognostic factor for the evaluation of biological behavior in NSCLCs.
