Current Review of Beta-Catenin Expression and its Implications in the Oral Epithelial Dysplasia Study

Abstract

The rise of oral cancer is often preceded by the appearance of some potentially malignant disorder, which can be defined as morphological changes in tissue in which a malignant neoplasia is more likely to rise than in clinically normal tissue. Thus, a set of histopathological changes associated with an increased likelihood of developing carcinomas define the presence of epithelial dysplasia that is not related to any specific clinical presentation. Several studies have been conducted with the aim of studying the carcinogenesis in an attempt to establish a laboratory technique that can indicate which potentially malignant disorders would be actually able to become malignant. b-catenin is an adhesion protein present in the epithelium. The detection of changes in its expression in cancer cells allowed the construction of hypotheses about its role in potentially malignant disorders. In this literature review, the authors aimed to gather information on immunohistochemical expression of b-catenin in oral epithelial dysplasia focusing on better understand oral carcinogenesis.