Expression And Clinical Significance Of COX-2, VEGF And Beta-catenin In Pancreatic Carcinoma

Pancreatic carcinoma ( PC ) is a highly malignant tumor with increased morbidity, which is typically associated with a very poor prognosis and advanced stage at presentation. One important cause of the poor prognosis even after radical suegery is that we have no sensitive and specific tumor markers, which makes diagnosis rather difficult. And adjuvant therapy is necessary to improve the surgical results.OBJECTIVETo evaluate the expression of COX-2, VEGF and Beta - catenin and their correlationship with clinicopathologic characteristics and prognostic significance in pancreatic carcinoma.MATERIALS AND METHODSThe subjects were 42 patients who underwent surgical excision and histopathologically diagnosed with pancreatic adenocarcinoma at our hospital between January 2000 and April 2002. For the controls, 10 specimens of normal pancreas from the medical univercity of china were used ( all the tissue were formalin fixed and paraffin - embeded). All the specimens were detected by the technique of the immunohisto-chemical S - P with monoclonal antibody COX-2'and beta-Catenin, polyclonal antibody VEGF (Santa Cruz Biotechnology,Inc. ).For statistical analysis, the chi - square test were used. P valueless than 0. 05 was regarded as significant.RESULTS1. The expression of Cyclooxygenase ( COX) - 2 was present in pancreatic carcizioma and no COX - 2 staining was detected in normal pancreata. And there was significant relationship between the pancreatic carcinoma and normal pancreatic tissue. The expression was significantly related to the lymph node metastasis and histopathologic tumor grade, the expression was present in 96. 4% (27/28) of the specimens with lymph node metastasis, was not significantly related to the sex,tumor size,tumor site.2. The expression of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) was detected in 32 of 42(76. 2% ) pancreatic carcinoma and in 1 of 10 normal pancreata. There was significant relationship between the pancreatic carcinoma and normal pancreata, was significantly related to the lymph node metastasis , the expression of VEGF was present in 89. 3% (25/28) of the specimens with lymph node metastasis. There was no significant association between VEGF expression and the histo-logic type, the sex,tumor size,tumor site.3. The expression of beta - catenin was detected in 26 of 42(61. 9% ) pancreatic carcinoma and no beta - catenin staining was detected in normal pancreata. There was significant relationship between the pancreatic carcinoma and normal pancreata. was significantly related to the lymph node metastasis , the expression of beta - catenin was present in 75% (21/28) of the specimens with lymph node metastasis. There was no significant association between beta - catenin expression and the histologic type, the sex,tumor size and tumor site.4. The expression of COX - 2 was corelated with the expression ofVEGF in pancreatic carcinoma, there was no relationship between COX - 2 and beta - catenin, between VEGF and beta - catenin.CONCLUSIONSoverexpressions of Cyclooxygenase ( COX) - 2 protein, VEGF, beta-catenin were detected in pancreatic carcinoma and the ex-pressins were significantly related to the lymph node metastasis. The expression of COX-2 protein was significantly related to histopatho-logic tumor grade.