Cortical thymocyte differentiation in thymomas: an immunohistologic analysis of the pathologic microenvironment

Four monoclonal antibodies (BH11, T2/30, AG3, and BC3) were produced against different epithelial components of the normal thymus. An immunohistologic study was performed on 13 thymomas by the use of these and other stromal and lymphocyte-specific reagents. The aim of this study was to find possible relationships between the proliferating thymoma epithelial cell type and the T cell composition of thymomas. Our results indicate that cortical T cell differentiation is present in thymomas, and that this differentiation is induced in the absence of detectable levels of MHC class II antigens on the epithelial component in most cases. The role of the MHC class II antigens cannot be excluded, however, because these antigens were always present on macrophages. Analysis of the selected group of thymomas, each of which contained epithelial cells homogeneously stained by at least one of the described monoclonal antibodies, showed that the cortical type T cell inducer capacity of thymomas is independent of the epithelial type predominant in the tumor.