Bovine pulmonary blastomas: histomorphologic description and immunohistochemistry

Three adult female dairy cattle with pulmonary blastomas were evaluated. The gross lesions at postmortem were described as multiple white circumscribed masses throughout the lungs, with pleural involvement in one cow and lymph node metastasis in the other two cows. Histologically, the tumors contained a dual population of mesenchymal and epithelial neoplastic cells. Epithelial cells formed nests, tubules, and formations resembling bronchioles of normal lung. Mesenchymal cells were spindle shaped with oval nuclei and fibrillar eosinophilic cytoplasm, were large rounded cells with multiple round nuclei and granular eosinophilic cytoplasm, or appeared blast-like, with large hyperchromatic nuclei and amphophilic cytoplasm. The tumors varied greatly in appearance from one field to another within the same tumor. Epithelial cells stained positively with anticytokeratin antibodies. Some spindle-shaped mesenchymal cells exhibited smooth muscle cell differentiation with positive staining with anti-vimentin, anti-muscle-specific actin, and anti-smooth muscle actin antibodies, whereas other rounded mesenchymal cells expressed striated muscle cell differentiation with multiple nuclei and positivity to anti-neuron-specific enolase and anti-muscle-specific actin antibodies. The variable expression of the intermediate filaments and cytoplasmic enzymes indicates multiple pathways of differentiation in the pulmonary blastomas.