Bcl‐2/p‐FADD could be a Potential Prognostic Marker in Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma

The impaired regulation of apoptosis is thought to play a role in pathogenesis of a variety of malignancies including esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC). To investigate if the proteins in the apoptosis pathway impact the survival of ESCC, we studied their expressions using immunohistochemistry on a tissue microarray (TMA). Our TMA included 327 tissues of individuals with ESCC which were collected from the subjects residing in Shanxi Province in China, where age standardized incidence rate (>100/100, 000 per year) of ESCC was extraordinary high. The studied apoptotic markers were FasL, Fas, Fas‐associated death domain protein (FADD), phospho‐FADD (p‐FADD), caspase 8 and 10, and bcl‐2. The Kaplan‐Meyer curves revealed no strong differences for the markers above, but the combination of bcl‐2/p‐FADD showed a median survival advantage. We also performed bcl‐2 staining on TMAs of biopsied samples of 48 ESCC, 23 dysplasia, and 42 normal epithelium which were collected from the Chinese patients. The level of bcl‐2 expression of ESCC was significantly higher than that of dysplasia which was higher than that of normal tissue. These results suggest that bcl‐2/p‐FADD could be a potential prognostic marker in ESCC, and bcl‐2 could be a potential progression marker in patients at risk for ESCC.