HISTOPATHOLOGICAL AND IMMUNOHISTOCHEMICAL STUDY OF COLORECTAL ADENOMA AND ADENOCARCINOMA

Abstract

Colorectal cancer comprises 11 % of all cancer incidence and 13% of all cancer mortality in the United States. However, the worldwide age incidence is rare before the age of 40 and then increases significantly in each succeeding decade. In Egypt the incidence of colorectal cancer is about 6.55% of the all cancers represented to National Cancer Institutes and about 11. 7% of the all cancers represented to his private practice. In Egypt, the mean age of cancer patients is 48 years, two decades younger than the mean age of American cancer patients. Screening studies have indicated that CRC is typically diagnosed 10-15 years after adenoma detection. Early detection of colorectal cancer is fundamental for prevention and the key is to find the marker which is expressed in high risk (cancerous and precancerous) but not in normal tissues. COX-2 is an inducible enzyme expressed in response to a variety of physiological stimuli such as inflammation, wound healing and neoplasia. These observations suggest that Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) have a potent chemopreventive effect on colon cancer. NSAIDs have also been shown to exert anti-proliferative and pro-apoptotic effects on a variety of cell lines particularly colon cancer cell lines, suggesting a possible mechanism for their chemopreventive effect on colon cancer and COX is the molecular target of most of NSAIDs. C-myc proto-oncogene as the cellular homologue to the transforming sequences of the avian myelocytomatosis retrovirus. C-myc belongs to the family of myc genes that also includes B-myc, L-myc, N-myc, and s-myc; however, only c-myc, L-myc, and IN-myc are