immunohistochemical expression of p53 and bcl-2 proteins in advanced esophageal cancer patients

the current challenges in the management of esophageal cancer are to obtain a better understanding of underlying molecular alterations to provide new treatment options. we studied the p53 and bcl-2 protein expression in esophageal carcinomas to correlate molecular alterations with clinicopathological findings. tissue samples of 37 patients with advanced esophageal carcinoma were analyzed by immunohistochemical techniques. positive immunostaining for p53 and bcl-2 were observed in 67.6% and 43.6% of tumor samples, respectively. the prevalence of bcl-2 overexpression was significantly greater in p53+ tumors ‎as compared with p53- tumors (p = 0.003). unlike p53, positive bcl-2 immunostaining correlated significantly with tumor type (p = 0.001) and histological differentiation (p = 0.007). our data also showed that 35% of patients were positive for both proteins and 32.4% of patients were positive for p53 but negative for bcl-2 expression. these results indicate two types of double gene alterations that obviously would affect tumor biology and response to chemotherapy. therefore, it is advisable to determine expression profile of certain genes including p53 and bcl-2 in tumor samples before selecting chemotherapy regimen.