The Relation Between The Expression Of Hypoxia-inducible Factor-1 Alpha And Angiogenesis In Human Pancreatic Cancer

Object To study the relation between expression of hypoxia-inducible factor-1 alpha (HIF-1) and pathological characteristics in human pancreatic cancer and its relation with vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and microvessel density (MVD), and to investigate the mechanism of angiogenesis in pancreatic cancer.Method Immunohistochemistry staining (PicTure two steps method) was used to detect expression of HIF-1 , VEGF and CD34 in 47 paraffin-embeded pancreatic carcinomas and 10 normal pancreases tissues, and the MVD was calculated on the sections marked with CD34 antibody.Results In pancreatic carcinoma, the positive rates of HIF-1 and VEGF and the level of MVD were significantly higher than those in normal pancreases tissues (55.3% vs 0%, 61.7% vs 0%, 37.61 + 14.32 vs 7.55 2.42, respectively) (P= 0.001,0.0003 ; t'=13.51; P<0.01). HIF-1 and VEGF proteins expression and MVD were closely correlated with invasion and lymph node or distant metastasis (x2=4.32,6.01,4.75,4.62 ; t=2.38,3.92 ; P<0.05), but not with size, histologic grade and 1-year survival rate of patients (P>0.05). There were positively relationship among the expression of HIF-1 and VEGF and MVD level (r=0.329, 0.594, 0.366; x 2=5.71,t=4.96, 2.64; P<0.05).Conclusion The HIF-1 gene may be activated by hypoxia, and the overexpression of HIF-1 a protein induces the tumor angiogenesis by activating the transcription of VEGF gene and promotes the invasion and metastasis of pancreatic cancer. The expression level of HIF-1 , VEGF and MVD may be useful biological index juding metastasis of pancreatic cancer.