Background: Soft tissue sarcomas include multiple histological subtypes and are highly aggressive. Moreover, SR-B1 is associated with malignant behavior and poor prognosis in a variety of cancers. However, there have been no attempts to assess whether SR-B1 expression in soft tissue sarcoma. We aimed to detect the expression levels of the SR-B1 protein in soft tissue sarcoma. Methods: We assessed SR-B1 expression via immunohistochemistry and tissue microarrays in 107 soft tissue sarcomas with 4 phenotypes: 26 liposarcomas, 18 Ewing's sarcomas, 20 rhabdomyosarcomas and 43 leiomyosarcomas. Results: Tumor cell SR-B1 expression was seen in 18/26 (69.2%) liposarcomas, 1/18 (5.55%) Ewing's sarcomas, 1/20 (5.00%) rhabdomyosarcomas, 2/43 (4.70%) leiomyosarcomas and was stained in the cell membrane. We found that SR-B1 expression in liposarcomas (18/26) was significantly higher than that in non-lipomatous sarcomas (4/77) (χ2 = 49.811, p = 0.000) and in well-differentiated liposarcoma (13/15) was significantly higher than that in dedifferentiated liposarcoma (5/11) (p = 0.038). No significant correlation was found between SR-B1 and gender, nationality, size and tumor location (p > 0.05), but it was significantly associated with ages (χ2 = 11.426, p = 0.001) and sarcoma phenotypes (χ2 = 49.817, p = 0.000). Conclusion: Our findings highlight the highly expression of SR-B1 in liposarcomas. SR-B1 may be a potential biomarker for the diagnosis of liposarcoma and may indicate the degree of differentiation of liposarcomas.
Keywords: Biomarker; Immunohistochemistry; Liposarcoma; Scavenger receptor class B type 1; Tissue microarray.