Expression pattern of class I histone deacetylases in vulvar intraepithelial neoplasia and vulvar cancer: a tissue microarray study

Abstract

Abstract Background Epigenetic regulation is an important mechanism leading to cancer initiation and promotion. Histone acetylation by histone deacetylases (HDACs) represents an important part of it. The development of HDAC inhibitors has identified the utility of HDACs as a therapeutic target. Little is known about the epigenetic regulation of vulvar intraepithelial neoplasia (VIN) and vulvar squamous cell cancer (VSCC). In this study, the expression of class I HDACs (HDAC 1, 2 and 3) was compared in a series of VIN and VSCC tissues. Methods A tissue micro array (TMA) with specimens from 106 patients with high-grade VIN and 59 patients with vulvar cancer was constructed. The expression of HDACs 1, 2 and 3 were analyzed with immunohistochemistry (IHC). The nuclear expression pattern was evaluated in terms of intensity and percentage of stained nuclei and was compared between vulvar preinvasive lesions and vulvar cancer. Results HDAC 2 expression was significantly higher in VIN than in VSCC (p Conclusions These results suggest that epigenetic regulation plays a considerable role in the transformation of VIN to invasive vulvar neoplasia.

Keywords

• Histone deacetylase
• epigenetics
• vulvar intraepithelial neoplasia
• vulvar squamous cell cancer
• tissue microarray
• immunohistochemistry