I am looking for squamous metaplasia in human tissue. I wonder if anybody used a specific marker (antibody) to identify metaplastic squamous cells by immunohistochemistry.
What comes to my mind almost immediately is TP63 or p63. This protein is "primarily" expressed in squamous epithelia, is expressed at high levels and there are good antibodies against it. It has an expression pattern similar to Krt14 and Krt5. Is it perfect? probably not. Another problem I see with p63 is the specificity of the antibodies since there might be problems with p53 and p73. There are so many different isoforms of those and p63 itself.
If there is differentiation then one should be able to detect Krt4 and Krt13 (for mucosal epithelia such as the oral squamous epithelium). These are pretty specific squamous epithelial markers and more restricted than p63/Krt14/Krt5. I am sure there are better ones but these are good for starters. There are good antibodies for all of them, they are all highly expressed and easy to detect.
Maybe CK5/14 is useful.
only one example to look at: http://biocare.net/wp-content/uploads/3026.pdf
http://www.nordiqc.org/Epitopes/Cytokeratins/Cytokeratins.htm
p40 may be superior to p63 for identifying squamous differentiation. Otherwise I agree with Thomas Andl's comments.
Many thanks to Dr Thomas, Dr Gudrun and Dr Gerald for your answers. I really appreciate your kind help. My point is to identify squamous metaplasia from columnar mucin secreting cells. So any of the antibody you mentioned will be helpful if it is not secreted by such cells. From your experience; which of these molecules (P63, CK5/6, CK5/14) is not secreted by columnar cells?? Thanks in advance.
Could you a little bit more specific? Many glands express K14/K5/p63 in the myoepithelial/basal cells but not the luminal cells. These are not secreted proteins. That is why I mentioned K13/K4 as an alternative. Their drawback is their association with differentiation. If you look for a metaplasia associated with malignancy, these differentiation markers may not work as well. I am a big fan of the Human Protein Atlas (http://www.proteinatlas.org/). It has a decent search function which might let you define markers specifically expressed in squamous epithelia versus your original epithelium. A new feature of the Human protein Atlas can be found here:
http://www.proteinatlas.org/humanproteome/tissue+specific.
If it is an "activated metaplasia" then keratinocyte activation markers such as Krt6, and Krt17 may also work.
Other good markers are desmosomal proteins such as DSC3 and DSG3.
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