Background: Chronic pancreatitis is a well-established risk factor of pancreatic cancer. Pancreatic ductal adenocarcarcinomaadenocarcinoma is the most common histiotypehisto-type of pancreatic cancer and considered the third leading cause of cancer deaths in the US. Different markers were used as diagnostic methods for PDAC as CA19-9 which have low sensitivity and specificity. AXL is a receptor tyrosine kinase (RTK) belonging to the tumor-associated macrophage (TAM) protein family that is involved in tumorgenesistumorogenesis and progression of many cancers. Aim: To evaluate the significance of (AXL) expression in chronic pancreatitis & PDAC and to compare & correlate (AXL) expression with the available clinicopathological data . Material and methods: This is a retrospective study using microarray technique carried upon selected formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded biopsy specimens of 50 PDAC cases and 10 cases of chronic pancreatitis. Clinicopathological characteristics of the examined cases were correlated with immunohistochemistry of AXL. Results: There is a significant statistical correlation between PDAC and chronic pancreatitis as regard expression of AXL with more frequency of positive expression among carcinoma cases (P=0.002). There is a significant statistical correlation between AXL scoring and different histological grade of studied cases, tumor necrosis, perineural invasion and TNM stage of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (P value= 0.001, 0.006, 0.002 and P=0.05 respectively). Conclusion: The expression of AXL is more in PDAC than chronic pancreatitis cases indicating that AXL could have a role in the development of PDAC. AXL showed a significant correlation with tumor grade, tumor necrosis, with sensitivity 84%, specificity 90% and accuracy 89%. |
