Background: Chronic pancreatitis is a well-established risk
factor
pancreatic
cancer.
Pancreatic
ductal
adenocarcinoma is the most common histo-type of
pancreatic cancer and considered the third leading cause of
cancer deaths in the US. Different markers were used as
diagnostic methods for PDAC as CA19-9 which have low
sensitivity and specificity. AXL is a receptor tyrosine
kinase (RTK) belonging to the tumor-associated
macrophage (TAM) protein family that is involved in
tumorigenesis and progression of many cancers. Aim: To
evaluate the significance of (AXL) expression in chronic
pancreatitis & PDAC and to compare & correlate (AXL)
expression with the available clinicopathological data.
Material and methods: This is a retrospective study using
microarray technique carried upon selected formalin-fixed
paraffin-embedded biopsy specimens of 50 PDAC cases
and 10 cases of chronic pancreatitis. Clinicopathological
characteristics of the examined cases were correlated with
immunohistochemistry of AXL. Results: There is a
significant statistical correlation between PDAC and
chronic pancreatitis as regard expression of AXL with more
frequency of positive expression among carcinoma cases
(P=0.002). There is a significant statistical correlation
between AXL scoring and different histological grade of
studied cases, tumor necrosis, perineural invasion and TNM
stage of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (P value= 0.001,
0.006, 0.002 and P=0.05 respectively). Conclusion: The
expression of AXL is more in PDAC than chronic
pancreatitis cases indicating that AXL could have a role in
the development of PDAC. AXL showed a significant
correlation with tumor grade, tumor necrosis, with
sensitivity 84%, specificity 90% and accuracy 89%.