IMMUNOHISTOCHEMICAL EXPRESSION OF C-KIT IN ORAL SQUAMOUS CELL CARCINOMA PATIENTS IN SOUTH INDIAN POPULATIONS

Objective: The study was designed to evaluate the C-Kit expression and also to assess the relationship with various clinicopathological characteristics in oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) patients.Methods: A total number of 102 formalin-fixed paraffin-embedded retrospective tissue samples were collected, in which (n =84) were histologically confirmed for OSCC, oral epithelial dysplasia (OED) (n=9), and control group (n=10) and studied immunohistochemically. The baseline characters and the correlation between the protein expression and clinicopathological parameters were analyzed. The survival analysis was performed using Kaplan-Meier Survival Method.Results: OSCC exhibited C-Kit protein expression positivity of 6% and OED with 11.11% with no expression of this protein in control patients. Overall survival analysis showed that patients with negative expression had a better survival than patients with positive expression. However, we found that expression pattern of C-kit did not correlate with various clinicopathological characteristics.Conclusion: Vast amount of study has to be still performed to under the mechanism of OSCC in C-KIT Expression to enhance the prognosis of OSCC patients in the near future.