[Studies on antigen associated with human squamous cell carcinoma (SCC antigen) in patients with esophageal...

The authors studied on SCC antigen in patients with esophageal carcinoma. Serum SCC antigen was found in 9 (40.9%) of 22 patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma and 5 (55.5%) of 9 patients with lung squamous cell carcinoma, but was not found in other malignant diseases, such as gastric cancer, hepatoma, colon cancer, pancreas cancer and biliary try tract cancer. SCC antigen positive cases increased in association with progression of histological invasion, grade of nodal metastasis and clinical stage. However, in early esophageal carcinoma, SCC antigen was rarely positive. There was no positive case in patients with poorly differentiated squamous cell carcinoma regardless of clinical stage. Positive rate of SCC antigen increased in association with progression of clinical stage in patients with moderately and well differentiated squamous cell carcinoma. Immunoreactivity of SCC, which was investigated immunohistologically with TA-4 rabbit serum, was not found in cases with poorly differentiated squamous cell carcinoma, but was found in keratinized portion and cytoplasm of moderately and well differentiated carcinoma. From the above, SCC antigen is intimately related with keratinization of squamous cell carcinoma, and it was thought that it could be useful as a good marker for diagnosis of moderately and well differentiated squamous carcinoma of the esophagus.