@article{FreyHoubenBroecker2010, author = {Frey, LiĀ­dia M. and Houben, Roland and Br{\"o}cker, Eva-B.}, title = {Pigmentation, Melanocyte Colonization, and p53 Status in Basal Cell Carcinoma}, url = {http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-68283}, year = {2010}, abstract = {Basal cell carcinoma (BCC) is the most common neoplasm in the Caucasian population. Only a fraction of BCC exhibits pigmentation. Lack of melanocyte colonization has been suggested to be due to p53-inactivating mutations in the BCC cells interfering with the p53-proopiomelanocortin pathway and the production of alpha melanocyte-stimulating hormone in the tumor. To evaluate this, we determined tumor pigmentation as well as expression of melan-A and of p53 in 49 BCC tissues bymeans of immunohistochemistry. As expected, we observed a positive relation between tumor pigmentation and melan-A positive intratumoral melanocytes.Melanocyte colonization and, to a lesser extent, p53 overexpression showed intraindividual heterogeneity in larger tumors. p53 overexpression, which is indicative of p53 mutations, was not correlated to melanocyte colonization of BCC. Sequencing of exon 5-8 of the p53 gene in selected BCC cases revealed that colonization by melanocytes and BCC pigmentation is neither ablated by p53 mutations nor generally present in BCCs with wild-type p53.}, subject = {Medizin}, language = {en} }