TY  - JOUR
A1  - Sbiera, Iuliu
A1  - Kircher, Stefan
A1  - Altieri, Barbara
A1  - Fassnacht, Martin
A1  - Kroiss, Matthias
A1  - Sbiera, Silviu
T1  - Epithelial and Mesenchymal Markers in Adrenocortical Tissues: How Mesenchymal Are Adrenocortical Tissues?
JF  - Cancers
N2  - A clinically relevant proportion of adrenocortical carcinoma (ACC) cases shows a tendency to metastatic spread. The objective was to determine whether the epithelial to mesenchymal transition (EMT), a mechanism associated with metastasizing in several epithelial cancers, might play a crucial role in ACC. 138 ACC, 29 adrenocortical adenomas (ACA), three normal adrenal glands (NAG), and control tissue samples were assessed for the expression of epithelial (E-cadherin and EpCAM) and mesenchymal (N-cadherin, SLUG and SNAIL) markers by immunohistochemistry. Using real-time RT-PCR we quantified the alternative isoform splicing of FGFR 2 and 3, another known indicator of EMT. We also assessed the impact of these markers on clinical outcome. Results show that both normal and neoplastic adrenocortical tissues lacked expression of epithelial markers but strongly expressed mesenchymal markers N-cadherin and SLUG. FGFR isoform splicing confirmed higher similarity of adrenocortical tissues to mesenchymal compared to epithelial tissues. In ACC, higher SLUG expression was associated with clinical markers indicating aggressiveness, while N-cadherin expression inversely associated with these markers. In conclusion, we could not find any indication of EMT as all adrenocortical tissues lacked expression of epithelial markers and exhibited closer similarity to mesenchymal tissues. However, while N-cadherin might play a positive role in tissue structure upkeep, SLUG seems to be associated with a more aggressive phenotype.
KW  - adrenocortical tissues
KW  - EMT
KW  - epithelial markers
KW  - mesenchymal markers
KW  - recurrence-free survival
Y1  - 2021
U6  - http://nbn-resolving.de/urn/resolver.pl?urn:nbn:de:bvb:20-opus-236486
SN  - 2072-6694
VL  - 13
IS  - 7
ER  -