Relationship of p63 expression with histopathological parameters of basal and squamous cell carcinoma cases

Background P63 is a p53 homologue, which is considered to be a reliable keratinocyte stem cell marker. Objective To study the expression of p63 in cutaneous basal cell carcinoma (BCC) and squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) and correlate this expression with the pathological parameters. Patients and methods This study was carried out on 25 patients with BCC, 10 patients with SCC and seven healthy participants as a control group. In addition to thorough history taking and clinical examination, all groups were subjected to biopsy taking from BCC and SCC lesions and from the control participants. Routine histopathological examination with haematoxylin and eosin stain was conducted and immunohistochemical staining was also performed to evaluate the expression of p63 antigen by using Mouse Monoclonal Antibody. Results P63 was expressed in all studied cases. In the control group, p63 showed strong intensity of expression with percentage of 92.86± 2.67 of the epidermal cells. The percentage of expression of p63 in BCC in the epidermal cells was 89.72± 6.24, whereas in SCC it was 73.5 ± 20.41. It was more expressed in basal and suprabasal layers of the control group. There was no statistically significant difference (P 0.05) between the percentage of expression of p63 in the epidermis of BCC cases with the control group, whereas there was a high statistically significant difference (P =0.001) between SCC with control and BCC groups. There was no statistical relationship between the percentage and intensity of p63 expression in BCC and SCC with histopathologic parameters. Conclusion P63 may have a function in maintaining the proliferative action and in preventing their entry into terminal differentiation.