Assessment of folate receptor-β expression in human neoplastic tissues

Over-expression of folate receptor alpha on cancer cells has been frequently exploited for delivery of folate-targeted imaging and therapeutic agents to tumors. Because limited information exists on expression of the beta isoform of the folate receptor in human cancers (FR-β), we have evaluated the immunohistochemical staining pattern of FR-β in 992 tumor sections from 20 different human cancer types using a new anti-human FR-β monoclonal antibody. FR-β expression was shown to be more pronounced in cells within the stroma, primarily macrophages and macrophage-like cells than cancer cells in every cancer type studied. Moreover, FR-β expression in both cancer and stromal cells was found to be statistically more prominent in females than males. A significant positive correlation was also observed between FR-β expression on stromal cells and both the stage of the cancer and the presence of lymph node metastases. Based on these data we conclude FR-β may constitute a good target for specific delivery of therapeutic agents to activated macrophages and that accumulation of FR-β positive macrophages in the stroma could serve as a useful indicator of a tumor's metastatic potential.

• Publication year

  2015

• Venue

  OncoTarget

• Publication date

  2015-03-30

• Fields of study

  Biology, Medicine

• Identifiers
  DOI 10.18632/ONCOTARGET.3739PMID 25909292PMCID 4546498
• External record

  Open on Semantic Scholar

• Source metadata

  Semantic Scholar, PubMed

• No claims are published for this paper.

• No concepts are published for this paper.

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