Pre- and post-treatment specimens from 47 patients with hormone resistant prostatic carcinoma were compared with each other regarding histological grade and immunoreactivity for p53 protein, neuron specific enolase and c-erbB-2 protein. Significantly more specimens expressed a high malignancy grade when the tumour had become hormone resistant than at the time of initial diagnosis (Gleason P: < 0.0001, WHO P:0.0003). p53 protein immunoreactivity increased significantly with disease progression (P:0.006), while tissue PSA immunoreactivity was reduced in post-treatment specimens (P:0.011). p53 protein expression did not correlate with histological grade or PSA expression and seems to be an independent parameter which participates late in the neoplastic transformation. Thirty-two percent of the tumours were neuron specific enolase positive, but this parameter did not correlate with development of hormone resistance. c-erbB-2 protein reactivity was not recognised. Images Figure 1

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Summary Tissue specimens from 150 patients with localised prostatic carcinomas and 116 patients with prostatic carcinomas with distant metastases were analysed for histological grade (WHO and Gleason) and immunoreactivity for prostate acid phosphatase (PAP), prostate-specific antigen (PSA), neurone-specific enolase (NSE), p53 protein, c-erbB-2 protein, cytokeratins (AEI/AE3) and vimentin. After stratification for the presence or absence of distant metastases, multivariate regression analysis revealed that WHO grading was the most powerful independent prognosticator, followed by age and prostate acid phosphatase expression. There was a trend towards reduced survival with decreasing prostate-specific antigen reactivity. The Gleason system showed poor prognostic ability. The analysis predicted reduced survival in the presence of extensive neurone-specific enolase reactivity, mostly because of one case of small-cell carcinoma.

Summary A total of 237 breast carcinomas have been studied with the Courtenay-Mills (C-M) soft agar method. Cell yields and plating efficiencies (PE) were recorded after various enzyme treatments. The highest cell yields and PEs were obtained with the combination of collagenase 0.5%, hyaluronidase 1000IEml-1 and DNase 0.10% and an incubation time of 2 h. Eighty percent of the specimens gave > 10 colonies, and 60% formed >30 colonies permitting chemosensitivity studies. The C-M method gave significantly higher PEs than the Hamburger-Salmon (H-S) method. Hormone supplements (insulin, oestradiol, progesterone, hydrocortisone) and also reduced agar concentrations (<0.3%) gave marginal stimulation of colony formation. In chemosensitivity studies involving doxorubicin, vincristine and 4-OOH-cyclophosphamide, the C-M method gave dose-response relationships without plateaus.

These data suggest that tissue PAP and tissue PSA predict the pN status in patients with T0-T3/M0 prostate carcinoma, in addition to serum PSA and T category. Neuroendocrine differentiation and p53 protein seem to have no predictive ability.