The relevance of CD117-immunocytochemistry staining patterns to mutational exon-11 in c-kit detected by PCR from fine-needle aspirated canine mast cell tumor cells

Canine cutaneous mast cell tumors (MCT) are the lethal skin tumors. The biological behavior of the MCT cells is quite varied and unpredictable. Almost MCT dogs usually require a rapid diagnosis and therapy. However, MCT diagnosis and prognosis are still dependent on histopathology which is rather inconvenient, time-consuming, painful, and harmful for some cases. Indeed, MCT can be easily accessible using fine-needle aspiration (FNA). In this study, our biopsy specimens were classified as low- and high-grade MCT based on the novel 2-tier histopathologic grading system. We have demonstrated the usage of fine-needle aspirated MCT cells (FNA-MCT cells) from these specimens as a primary cell source to study the distribution of CD117-immunocytochemistry (CD117-ICC) staining patterns and the frequency of internal tandem duplication- (ITD-) mutant exon-11 of c-kit. The result has substantially shown that there were three staining patterns identified in the cells. Only paranuclear pattern was significantly increased in the cells from high-grade MCT. Altogether, the ITD-mutant exon-11 was also detectable only in these cells. Therefore, the result has supported our hypothesis that there was an increased opportunity to observe a higher CD117-ICC staining pattern and exon-11 mutation in high-grade MCT; even these two parameters may not precisely indicate a histopathological grade.