In the retrospective cohort, 45% of ICCs and <1% of non-hepatic adenocarcinomas showed a cholangiolar pattern; albumin ISH was positive in 93% of ICCs with significant intratumorous heterogeneity.
Genes highly upregulated specifically in AD included albumin (1,732-fold), protein lin-28 homolog A, which is a positive regulator of cyclin-dependent kinase 2 (150-fold) and gastric lipase (81-fold).
Seventeen (60.7%) of 28 patients in the LP group developed adenocarcinoma, which was more frequent than that in the LC group ( P < .01); the LP group displayed lower counts of hemoglobin and albumin than the LC group ( P < .05); the counts of leukocyte (white blood cell) and d-dimer of patients in the LP group were also higher than those in the LC group ( P < .05).
Our findings confirm that ISH for albumin mRNA probe is a valuable method of establishing hepatocellular differentiation, and that hepatoid adenocarcinomas are tumours with true extrahepatic hepatocellular differentiation.