Venous invasion demonstrated by orcein staining of colorectal carcinoma specimens is associated with the development of distant metastasis

Abstract

Elastic stains such as the orcein stain enable the detection of clinically relevant VI with greater frequency than conventionally stained histological slides. If nodal involvement is an indication for systemic chemotherapy, the data presented here suggest that VI detected by the orcein stain should also be an indication for systemic chemotherapy.

Developments in the assessment of venous invasion in colorectal cancer: implications for future practice and patient outcome

“…However, serial sections were not specifically obtained to permit a true comparison of the sensitivity of elastic and H&E stains in detecting VI. Recent studies have all demonstrated the superiority of an elastic stain in increasing the detection of VI when compared with a standard H&E stain on an adjacent section (Table 3) [35,36,[39][40][41]. In most instances, a 3-fold increase in the VI detection rate was noted, even when nonspecialist gastrointestinal (GI) pathologists were involved in the reporting of colorectal cancer specimens.…”

Small-Molecule Inhibitors of the Protein Methyltransferase SET7/9 Identified in a High-Throughput Screen

“…This compound, known as orsein, is one of a series of natural products used as nuclear counterstains (e.g., Sejben et al 16 ) and food dyes and was shown to be modestly active across the cell line panels used by the NCI (http://dtp.nci.nih.gov/docs/dtp_ search.html) in growth inhibition assays.…”

Vascular invasion detected by orcein staining and its significance in different tumours, with emphasis on colorectal cancer

“…The sensitivity of VI for the development of synchronous or future metastases seemed idealistically perfect (100%) in our preliminary study with a rather short median follow-up of 17 months, but its specificity was much less optimal (39%) [42]. The association between the development of distant metastasis and orcein-detected VI (but not H&E-detected VI) was significant.…”

“…On average, a threefold increase in the VI detection rate was experienced in some studies comparing H&E and elastic stains (Table 11) [10,12,25,30,[40][41][42]. In this setting, tumour cells surrounded by an elastic lamina are considered VI.…”

“…The use of elastic stains can provide a more precise identification of vascular invasion in CRC compared to routine H&E stain. And the demonstration of venous involvement by an elastic stain in CRC specimens is associated with a higher risk of distant metastasis [42]. Along the same lines, we tried to visualize VI in sections from cutaneous melanoma specimens using orcein staining.…”