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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Vet. Sci.
Sec. Oncology in Veterinary Medicine
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fvets.2025.1572923
CD117 (KIT) in canine soft tissue sarcoma: immunohistochemical and c-kit gene mutation assessment
Provisionally accepted
Silvia Dell'Aere 1*
Valentina Balbi 1
Damiano Stefanello 1
Giancarlo Avallone 2 Gabriele Ghisleni 1 Stefano Perfetto 3
Roberta Ferrari 1
Luigi Auletta 1
Elisa Maria Gariboldi 1
Alessandra Ubiali 1
Caterina Romanello 1 Alessandra Verdi 1
Paola Roccabianca 1- 1 Department of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Sciences – DIVAS, University of Milano, Lodi, Italy
- 2 Department of Veterinary Medical Science - DIMEVET, Bologna University, Bologna, Italy
- 3 BiEsseA Laboratorio di analisi veterinarie, an Antech company, Mars Petcare Science & Diagnostics, Milano, Italy
Canine Soft Tissue Sarcomas (STSs) are locally aggressive mesenchymal tu-mors with variable recurrence rates and therapy frequently limited to surgical excision. CD117 (KIT) is a tyrosine kinase receptor involved in cell growth and cancer development. c-kit proto-oncogene mutations have been correlated to prognosis and therapy response in human and canine cancers; however, CD117 expression and c-kit mutations have been rarely investigated in canine STSs. This study aims to assess CD117 expression and c-kit mutations in different canine STSs. Spontaneous STSs were surgically removed, fixed, routinely pro-cessed and stained for histology and anti-CD117 immunohistochemistry. Stain intensity and percentage of positivity were scored. Cases with intense CD117 expression in >50% of cells were submitted for exons 8, 9 or 11 c-kit proto-oncogene mutational assessment. Overall, 115 canine STS were collected. CD117 was expressed in 43/115 of sar-comas, with diffuse cytoplasmic staining of variable intensity. CD117 was ex-pressed in 16/27 perivascular wall tumors, 12/13 sarcomas of fibroblastic origin, 6/6 rhabdomyosarcomas, 7/46 liposarcomas and 2/3 nerve sheath tu-mors. Leiomyosarcomas (20/20) lacked CD117 expression. Mutations were in-vestigated in 22 cases, with negative results. Canine STSs variably expressed CD117, suggesting that tyrosine kinase inhibitors may represent a promising target therapy for selected canine STSs histotypes.
Keywords: canine, CD117, KIT, Soft Tissue Sarcoma, Therapeutical target, Tyrosine Kinase
Received: 07 Feb 2025; Accepted: 19 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Dell'Aere, Balbi, Stefanello, Avallone, Ghisleni, Perfetto, Ferrari, Auletta, Gariboldi, Ubiali, Romanello, Verdi and Roccabianca. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Silvia Dell'Aere, Department of Veterinary Medicine and Animal Sciences – DIVAS, University of Milano, Lodi, Italy
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