A longitudinal study of CEACAM1 expression in melanoma disease progression

The present study characterized the carcinoembryonic antigen-related cell adhesion molecule 1 (CEACAM1) expression profile in a longitudinal study during melanoma progression, in lesions obtained from the same patients: a primary skin lesion, a lymph node and a distant metastasis. The present study is expected to increase our understanding of the expression patterns of CEACAM1 in melanoma development. We identified 20 patients who could be analyzed for CEACAM1 expression over the course of disease progression. The pathology blocks were cut, and two slides were generated for each specimen. One underwent standard hematoxylin and eosin (H&E) staining and a corresponding slide underwent immunohistochemical staining for the detection of CEACAM1. For 13 patients who were able to be followed up serially from primary lesion, lymph node and distant metastasis, a borderline significant increase in the staining of the membrane was noted (P=0.06). In contrast, there was no equivalent increase in cytoplasmic CEACAM1 in the same group of patients. For the cohort of 20 patients with primary and distant metastasis, a significant increase in the membrane staining was noted (P=0.026) and again, no equivalent significant increase in cytoplasmic staining was observed. We report that CEACAM1 expression increases along the course of disease development and progression of a patient. CEACAM1 represents a novel area of research which may have profound influence in future methods of harnessing cellular immunity to combat this disease. The results of the present study confirm that CEACAM1 is potentially an extremely useful target in arresting melanoma progression.