Mucin1 utterance in oral squamous cell carcinoma: A cancer maker and target for nanotheranostics

Abstract

Mucins are cell bound high molecular weight glycoproteins which are secreted by epithelial cells. Total 21 mucin variants are identified till date. Mucin1 (MUC1) is a transmembrane glycoprotein, which when reacts with beta-catenin, can able to enter the nucleus to activate T-cell factor/leukocyte enhancing factor 1 transcription factors and gene expression, after which it may inhibit cell-cell and cell-stroma interactions and function as a signal transducer, leading to tumor progression.To compare and correlate the expression and positive intensity of MUC1 in oral squamous cell carcinoma, oral epithelial dysplasia and normal oral mucosa using Immunohistochemistry. This study included a total of 45 cases in which the study groups are oral squamous cell carcinoma (n=15), oral epithelial dysplasia (n=15) and control of normal oral mucosa (n=15), which are analysed for the expression of anti MUC1 rabbit monoclonal antibody using immunohistochemical technique.The mucin1 positive cells in the study groups were as follows, 53.3% cases in OSCC, 13.3% cases in OED and none showed positivity in normal oral mucosa. The results obtained were statistically analysed using Kruskal-Wallis test and there was a statistically significant difference in score between the different tissue groups, Kruskal – Wallis H score = 13.034, p = 0.001.There is progressive increase in the MUC1 expression from oral epithelial dysplasia to OSCC. This utterance might be due to suppression of inhibitory proteins for MUC1 immunoexpression in mature atypical squamous cells as well as proposed to act both as an anti-adhesive and adhesive molecule.