Cell proliferation markers in human solid tumors: Assessing their impact in clinical oncology

Abstract

Publisher Summary Proliferation, a fundamental biological process, is involved in determining growth and maintenance of tissue homeostasis. This chapter describes several approaches used to evaluate the proliferative activity of human solid tumors. It examines the relevance of S-phase markers in breast, colorectal, and lung cancers. Cell proliferation of primary breast and non-small cell lung cancers is only weakly related to clinical and pathologic stage, and such a relation is generally observed in large case series in which minimal differences in mean or median thymidine labeling index (TLI) or flow cytometry within stage subsets reached statistical significance. For colorectal cancer, as for other solid tumors, surgical resection represents the best treatment option, but it does not prevent the risk of relapse, which depends on degree of local invasion, spread to regional lymph nodes, and tumor site and differentiation. Alterations in cell proliferating compartments have been shown to be the early event of colon mucosa transformation, and an increase in proliferating or S-phase cell fraction has been generally shown to be related to poor prognosis.