Clinicopathological Significance of Immunohistochemical Expression of SOX2 Protein in Urothelial Carcinoma of Urinary Bladder in a Sample of Iraqi Patients

Background:Bladder carcinoma is the tenth most common carcinoma worldwide. It is one of the most common ten malignancies in Iraq. Sex determining region Y-box 2 (SOX2) is a transcription factor. It plays an essential role in cell fate determination. Aberrant expression of SOX2 has been reported in many types of carcinomas SOX2 expression is said to be associated with tumor progression.Objective:To evaluate the prognostic impact of SOX2 immunohistochemical expression in the urothelial carcinoma of the urinary bladder.Materials and methods:This is a retrospective study of fifty patients with urothelial carcinoma of bladder carried out in the Babylon Training Center for Histopathology during the period from December 2022 through December 2023. Two sections from each paraffin embedded tissue block were taken, one for hematoxylin and eosin staining for histopathology revision and the other for immunohistochemistry staining of SOX2.Results:In this study, 78.0% (n=39) showed low SOX2 expression, and 22.0% (n=26) showed ‘high’ SOX2 expression. A significant association was found between SOX2 expression and tumor stage and muscle invasion status.Conclusions:In the current study, we concluded that there was a significant association between SOX2 expression and poor prognostic factors and that SOX2 expression may help detect urothelial carcinoma patients with poor prognostic features.