Lymphocyte-macrophage colonization in various molecular biological types of endometrial cancer: comparison with the receptor status and proliferative activity of tumor tissue

Abstract

Recent years have been marked by a gradual shift from the previous division of endometrial cancer (EC) into two main types to modern molecular biological classifications of this disease, one of which (at present, most likely, the most popular: Talhouk et al., 2017, 2019) is based on the use of a combination of genetic and immunohistochemical analysis.
 The study involved material from untreated EC patients, the number of which varied depending on the method used. The average age of patients was close to 55-60 years, and over 80% of patients were postmenopausal.
 Deparaffinized blocks of EC tissue were analyzed for POLE (DNA polymerase epsilon) mutations, evaluated by immunohistochemistry (IHC) the expression of the oncoprotein p53 and MMR (mismatch-repair) proteins / MLH1, MSH2, MSH6 and PMS2 /, and also helped to identify the type of disease without a characteristic molecular profile (WCMP).
 In addition to studying the expression of p53 and MMR proteins, the IHC method was also used to study the expression of estrogen (ER) and progesterone (PR) receptors, the Ki-67 proliferative activity index, and the severity of macrophage-lymphocytic infiltration of the EC tissue based on the analysis of the macrophage marker (CD68) and markers of lymphocytic cells (cytotoxic CD8 and regulatory FoxP3) using reagents from Ventana and Dako.