Tapasin expression in cervical carcinoma

Abstract

Cervical cancer is the most common cancer among women worldwide. Even though HPV infection is known as the major risk factor of cervical carcinogenesis, immune evasion of infected cells or tumor cells is also well established as the major contributing factors. Down regulation of MHC class I as well as the presence of non-surface presenting MHC class I molecules have been previously reported. Our aim of this study is to investigate the expression level of tapasin protein which is one of the MHC class I antigen processing proteins in various stages of cancerous tissues. Seventy nine dysplasia and 49 cases of cervical cancer and 49 normal cervix from myoma patients as control were included in this study. The association between the expression level and disease progression was analyzed using χ2 for trend. The reduction of tapasin expression is significantly associated with respect to the progression of staging in both dysplasia and cervical cancer group (p=0.001; χ2 for trend). In conclusion, our study illustrates that the reduction in tapasin expression might exert as one of the mechanism leading to the impairment of antigen presenting of MHC class I in cancerous tissues. Therefore, tapasin staining might be useful as an early prognostic marker in dysplasia. More antigen processing proteins should be also further investigated.