Carcinoembryonic Antigen Expression in Human Tumors: A Tissue Microarray Study on 13,725 Tumors

Area of Science:

• Oncology
• Molecular Biology
• Cancer Biomarkers

Background:

• Carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) is a cell-surface glycoprotein with established roles in cancer diagnostics and monitoring.
• Existing data on CEA expression prevalence in various cancer tissues are inconsistent.
• Understanding CEA expression patterns is crucial for its therapeutic and diagnostic applications.

Purpose of the Study:

• To comprehensively determine the prevalence of CEA expression in a wide array of normal and neoplastic human tissues.
• To identify specific tumor types exhibiting significant CEA expression.
• To correlate CEA expression with clinical parameters and molecular features.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of a large-scale tissue microarray (TMA) comprising 13,725 samples.
• Inclusion of 120 distinct tumor types and 76 normal tissue types.
• Immunohistochemistry (IHC) was employed to detect CEA expression.

Main Results:

• CEA was detected in 54.2% (65/120) of tumor types, with strong positivity in 40.8%.
• High CEA prevalence was observed in colorectal adenomas/carcinomas, thyroid medullary carcinomas, pulmonary adenocarcinomas, and ovarian mucinous carcinomas.
• CEA overexpression correlated with tumor grade and invasiveness in bladder cancer, and with hormone receptor/HER2 status in breast cancer.

Conclusions:

• CEA is broadly expressed across a diverse range of epithelial neoplasms.
• The findings support the utility of CEA for serum monitoring and targeted anti-CEA therapies in numerous cancer types.
• This study provides a valuable resource for understanding CEA's role in oncogenesis and its clinical potential.