Research Article CD57 Expression in Incidental, Clinically Manifest, and Metastatic Carcinoma of the Prostate

Copyright © 2014 Holger Wangerin et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Objectives. CD57 is normally found on NK-cells, but little is known about its expression in prostatic tissue. Methods. We investigated CD57 expression by immunohistochemistry using tissue microarrays containing 3262 prostate cancers (PCa), lymph nodemetastases, and benign prostatic tissue.The results were compared with clinical and pathological parameters.Results. Overall, 87 % of PCa showed amoderate or strong expression of CD57.There was no significant difference to corresponding benign prostatic tissue. CD57 was increasingly lost from incidental over clinically manifest cancers to metastases. It correlated significantly with Gleason grade and pT-category, but not with PSA tissue expression. Loss of CD57 expressionwas an independent risk factor for PSA recurrence after prostatectomy in amultivariate Cox regression analysis. In standard sections, CD57 expression was heterogeneous, especially in large, high-grade PCa. Conclusions. There is a peculiar expression of CD57 in PCa and benign prostatic tissue. CD57 loss is associated with tumor dedifferentiation and tumor size. However, the use of this marker for prognostic purposes is hampered by its heterogeneous expression. 1