Centromere Protein F (CENPF): A novel marker for salivary gland pathology

BACKGROUND: Salivary gland tumours are relatively uncommon, and there exists considerable diagnostic difficulty. This is due to individual lesions having diverse histopathological features, presence of number of types and variants, and overlapping histological features in different tumour entities. AIM: The current study aimed at assessing the expression of centromere protein F (CENPF) in benign and malignant salivary gland tumours and to evaluate the efficacy of CENPF as a proliferative marker to aid in the diagnosis of malignancy so that it will help in surgical pathology practice. MATERIALS AND METHODS: The study group involved 20 cases of benign salivary gland tumours, 20 cases of malignant salivary gland tumours, and 10 normal salivary gland tissues. All the cases were subjected to immunohistochemical analysis for CENPF expression and were assessed by two independent observers and further taken up for evaluation. STATISTICAL ANALYSIS: The results were analysed statistically among different groups using analysis of variance (ANOVA) or Kruskal–Wallis test with Chi-squared test using IBM's Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 17.0. RESULTS: CENPF expression in normal salivary gland was negative with gradual increase in expression from benign salivary gland tumours to malignant salivary gland tumours. CENPF expression was high in malignant salivary gland tumours. CONCLUSION: Findings of the study suggest that CENPF can be regarded as a new cell proliferation marker for malignant salivary gland tumours.