High CD133 Expression Associated With Poor Prognosis in Cutaneous Squamous Cell Carcinoma

High CD133 expression is associated with poorly differentiated and advanced-stage cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma (cSCC) and correlated with poor prognosis in patients with the disease, a new study published online ahead of print in JAMA Dermatology has shown.¹

Although the CD133 protein has been considered a key biomarker of cancer stem cells in numerous cancer types, the expression status and prognostic significance of CD133 in cSCC is not clear.

Therefore, researchers performed immunohistochemistry on a tissue microarray to evaluate the expression levels of CD133 in cSCC tissue and investigate whether expression levels are associated with clinicopathological features and outcomes in patients with cSCC.

For the study, researchers analyzed 165 paraffin-embedded clinicopathological samples from 165 patients with available follow-up data.

Results showed that high CD133 expression was observed in 50.9% of the cSCC samples and in 16.7% of adjacent nonmalignant epithelial tissue samples (P = .001). Researchers observed high CD133 expression in 48.0% of well- to moderately differentiated samples compared with 84.6% of poorly differentiated samples (P = .01).

High CD133 expression was also found in the 45.5% of stage 1 to 2 samples and 65.9% of stage 3 samples (P = .02). In multivariate analysis, CD133 expression was an independent prognostic factor of cSCC (HR, 1.9152; 95% CI, 1.1950-3.3495; P = .02).

“[The CD133 protein] may serve as a useful biomarker to predict prognosis in patients with cSCC,” the authors concluded.

Reference

1. Xu R, Cai M-Y, Luo R-Z, et al. The expression status and prognostic value of cancer stem cell biomarker CD133 in cutaneous squamous cell carcinoma [published online ahead of print November 11, 2015]. JAMA Dermatol. doi: 10.1001/jamadermatol.2015.3781.