CD97, CD95 and Fas-L clearly discriminate between chronic pancreatitis and pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma in perioperative evaluation of cryocut sections

It is a major problem to distinguish between pancreatitis and pancreatic adenocarcinoma when it comes to the perioperative evaluation of pancreatic cryocut sections. In this respect, pathologists are showing a steadily growing interest in the potential application of apoptotic and dedifferentiation factors as diagnostic and prognostic markers. This study investigated the mRNA and protein expression of CD97, CD95 and Fas-L in snap-frozen material obtained from human pancreatic ductal adenocarcinomas (PDC; n=50), tissues from pancreatitis (PT; n=40) and normal pancreatic tissues (PN; n=36). Reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) analysis revealed that CD97, CD95 and Fas-L mRNA were expressed on a similarly high level in all tissues. In contrast, short time immunohistochemical evaluation showed that the CD95 protein was strongly expressed in PT and PN, but not in PDC. Fas-L protein was expressed strongly in PDC, whereas only weak or no expression was noted in PT or PN. CD97 protein expression was detected only in PT and in poorly differentiated PDC. Our data demonstrate that CD97, CD95 and Fas-L can be used as additional markers to distinguish between pancreatitis and pancreatic duct cell carcinoma in cryocut sections.