Prognostic significance of monoclonal antibody 3H‐1 reactivity with squamous‐cell head‐and‐neck cancers

Abstract

We report the reactivity of a novel murine IgM monoclonal antibody (MAb), 3H-1, in formalin-fixed tissue from a series of 44 patients with squamous-cell cancers (SCCs) of the upper aerodigestive tract. The antigen detected by 3H-1 MAb is not expressed in simple squamous epithelia and only rarely in non-squamous malignancies. The following staining patterns were found to be associated with a progressively unfavourable prognosis: membranous, diffuse cytoplasmic and focal cytoplasmic/nil staining. There were no statistically-significant associations between focal cytoplasmic/nil staining and traditionally used prognostic parameters such as tumour size, nodal involvement or pathologic grade. However, multivariate analyses demonstrated that focal or nil staining was a significant independent prognostic factor for survival (p less than 0.001) and was the only significant prognostic factor for relapse (p less than 0.001). The converse applied to tumours with predominantly membranous staining (p = 0.004). 3H-1 MAb, with the advantage of relying on the pattern rather than the intensity of staining, makes it possible to identify different cellular phenotypic sub-populations more accurately than by conventional means, and may ultimately improve our understanding of the mechanisms underlying transformation from a benign or proliferative state to a malignant one.