Original Paper ©2003, European Journal of Histochemistry

The aim of the present study was to evaluate the expression of the heat shock protein 60 (HSP60), a mitochondrial matrix-associated protein belonging to the chaperonin fami-ly, in colorectal adenomas and cancers, comparing them to normal colonic tissues and hyperplastic polyps. We per-formed both immunohistochemistry and Western blot analy-sis for HSP60. Immunohistochemistry resulted positive in all tubular adenomas and infiltrating adenocarcinomas. By con-trast, normal tissues and hyperplastic polyps were negative. Quantitative analysis showed that tubular adenomas with different levels of dysplasia did not present statistical differ-ences concerning HSP60 positivity. In addition, carcinomas always showed the highest expression. Western blot analysis confirmed these observations. These data suggest that HSP60 over-expression is an early event in carcinogenesis. We suspect that HSP60 plays a different role in colorectal carcinogenesis with respect to that in normal cells, which foresees its possible use as diagnostic and prognostic tools. Key words: pre-neoplastic lesions; dysplasia; heat shock protein