Evaluation of Twist 1 and Aurora-A antibodies via immunohistochemistry in Pancreatic Adenocarcinoma

Indianapolis, IN

Nearly 55,000 deaths occur as a result of pancreatic cancer annually, making it the fourth most deadly cancer to date. Patients are often not diagnosed until resentation at a stage IV, contributing to the high death toll. In this study, a Tissue Micro Array (TMA) was stained and analyzed for 2 biomarkers. The TMA contained 27 cases had 3 cores per case; 2 cores were adenocarcinomas of the pancreas and a core with non-cancerous adjacent area of tissue. The TMA was immunostained with antibodies TWIST-1 and AURORA kinase to show potential use as biomarkers to help determine treatment. Immunostaining was done by the Dako-flex system platform. Both positive and negative controls were used to verify staining specificity of the two antibodies. The Aperio Whole slide digital imaging system was used to create a digital image of the TMA, and then computer-assisted morphometric analysis was used to analyze the digital images. Immunostaining of Twist-1 was found in the ductal epithelial carcinoma cells in the pancreas, and also observed in the stroma of ductal adenocarcinoma cases. Stroma in higher stages, stages III and IV, showed higher expression of Twist-1 relative to stages I and II. Conversely, AURORA showed no staining in the stroma and was localized in the nucleus of a few tumor cells undergoing proliferation. TWIST-1 is associated with Epithelial to Mesenchymal transformation (EMT) and the data indicates Twist-1 may play a role in chemo-resistance of pancreatic cancer.