Ayşe Mine ÖNENERK MEN, Ayşe Hanım NAMAL, Ahu Senem DEMİRÖZ, Zehra ŞAHİN, Ceyda Sönmez WETHERILT, Övgü Aydın ÜLGEN, Tuğba Kevser UZUNÇAKMAK, Zeynep Hande TURNA
Cerrahpaşa Medical Journal - 2026;50(1):1-7
Objective: Melanoma has a poor prognosis in advanced stages. The study aimed to investigate the immunohistochemical expression of Cripto-1 (CR-1) and its relationship with clinicopathological parameters in cutaneous melanoma cases. Methods: Cutaneous melanoma cases diagnosed at Cerrahpaşa Medical Faculty between January 2016 and January 2023 were searched from the digital system. Immunohistochemical CR-1 stain was applied to all cases, and the results were compared with clinicopathological parameters. Results: A total of 78 cutaneous melanoma cases diagnosed between January 2016 and January 2023 were included in the study . CR-1 expression was observed in melanoma cells in 9% (n = 7) of the cases. Although statistically insignificant, CR-1-positive tumors were mostly located on the intermittently sun-exposed skin (57.1%; n = 4, pT4 (71.4%; n = 5), without regression (71.4%; n = 5), low density of tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes (71.4%; n = 5), and BRAFwt tumors (85.7%; n = 6/7). While the average survival was 16.5 +/- 11.6 months in CR-1-positive cases and 39.4 +/- 3.9 months in CR-1-negative cases, this result was not found to be statistically significant. Conclusion: CR-1 is a candidate protein for targeted therapy because it is an oncofetal protein and its expression is shown to be increased in malignancies while its expression is low/absent in normal adult tissues. In this study , CR-1 expression was detected in a small subset of melanoma cases and its expression was not correlated with clinicopathologic parameters.
