The latest collaboration between two of our esteemed Andrologists here at London Men’s Clinic, Prof Muneer and Mr Alnajjar, alongside fellow experts Dr Kravvas and Prof Bunker, has looked at the peri-tumoral field effects in Penile Cancer and the insights gleaned from Wnt-related protein expression in penile cancers.
Objective:
To determine whether a peritumoral molecular field exists around PeSCC by assessing expression and spatial colocalisation of key Wnt-related proteins in cancer-adjacent versus normal penile skin.
Method:
In this study, immunofluorescence-stained formalin fixed paraffin embedded tissue arrays were probed for Wnt4, cyclin D1, MMP7 and c-MYC proteins. The expression intensity and spatial colocalisation metrics were quantified. Comparisons between normal and cancer-adjacent tissues from 41 patients were conducted for the epidermis and dermis.
Conclusions:
This study provides the first evidence of molecular changes in peritumour tissue to demonstrate field effect in PeSCC, characterised by:
- Downregulation of Wnt4
- Upregulation of c-MYC
- Altered spatial colocalisation of Wnt-related proteins in cancer-adjacent skin
These findings suggest that peritumoral tissues exhibit early molecular alterations that extend beyond the morphologically defined tumour margin.
Recognising these changes may have implications for understanding tumour microenvironment conditioning and for the future development of biomarkers relevant to margin assessment in penile carcinogenesis.
Access to the full article can be found here.
Citation:
Georgios Kravvas, Xiaohu Zhang, Boyu Xie, Michael Millar, Alex Freeman, Aiman Haider, Hussain Alnajjar, Asif Muneer, Christopher B Bunker, Aamir Ahmed, Field effects in penile squamous cell carcinoma: Insights from Wnt-related protein expression, Clinical and Experimental Dermatology, 2026;, llag057, https://doi.org/10.1093/ced/llag057