Gynecologic and Obstetric Pathology

Design: Thirty-six radical prostatectomy cases with a diagnosis of prostatic adenocarcinoma were chosen from our archival specimens, including 18 patients who developed recurrent cancer after curative surgery, and 18 patients whose cancers did not recur during matched follow up times.NED was evaluated by performing immunohistochemistry (IHC) for Chromogranin A (CgA). 10 cancer areas are randomly selected on each whole mount section, and the CgA IHC staining intensity in these areas was graded as 0-5.Results: Significant intra-tumoral heterogeneity of CgA staining intensity was observed, as illustrated in Figure 1A.The cumulative CgA scores from 10 areas were higher in specimens from patients whose cancers relapsed, as compared with specimens from patients whose cancers did not recur.Mean cumulative CgA score is 18.72 ± 2.78 in the relapsed group and 8.28 ± 1.44 in the remission group.(Figure 1B andC) Conclusions: This study reveals that intra-tumor heterogeneity of NED exists in prostate adenocarcinoma and influences the precise evaluation of NED in clinical samples.Though the data is not conclusive, we do observe a lower level of NED in patients with remission compared to patients with relapsed cancer by thorough evaluation of NED in prostate whole mount sections.This study potentially provides guidance to clinical usage of NED in prostate adenocarcinoma.