CHK1 emerges as pleural effusion marker
New research flagged Checkpoint Kinase 1 (CHK1) as a potential diagnostic marker in pleural effusions, suggesting an ancillary marker to consider for body-fluid analysis. The finding could affect molecular routing and marker panels used in effusion workups. (x.com)
JASC published "Checkpoint Kinase 1 Protein (CHK1) as a Diagnostic Marker for Pleural Mesothelioma" online March 28, 2026, in the Journal of the American Society of Cytopathology (ScienceDirect). (sciencedirect.com) The article lists Azadeh Asghari Birbaneh as first author with co‑authors including Christos Meristoudis, Caspar Bundgaard Nielsen, Weronika M. Szejniuk, Morten Johansen, Peter D.C. Leutscher, Vasiliki Panou and Oluf D. Røe. (scilit.com) Immunostaining for CHK1 showed "robust and comparable sensitivity" in epithelioid pleural mesothelioma specimens regardless of whether the material was histology or cytology, and the authors reported the staining performance did not require H‑score quantitation. (sciencedirect.com) The paper explicitly proposes CHK1 as an adjunct IHC marker to add to mesothelioma panels for effusion cell‑block workups, citing performance on cytology material as the rationale for cell‑block implementation. (sciencedirect.com) That diagnostic focus dovetails with ongoing preclinical work treating CHK1 as a therapeutic target in pleural mesothelioma, where CHK1 inhibition produced dose‑dependent apoptosis and immune‑stimulatory effects in cell‑line and animal models presented at AACR 2025. (aacrjournals.org) Because the study reports comparable cytology/histology staining, the finding supports running CHK1 on standard FFPE cell‑block sections within existing IHC workflows used for serous‑fluid specimens. (sciencedirect.com 1) (sciencedirect.com 2)
