Thymidine Phosphorylase Expression And Angiogenesis In Colorectal Carcinoma

Objective: The growth and maintenance of solid tumor is dependent upon neovasculation. Thymidine phosphorylase (TP) is one of the main angiogenic factors. In order to investigate the practical role of TP and angiogenesis in the progression of colorectal carcinoma and to clarify whether angiogenesis has a prognostic value, TP expression and tumor microvessel density (MVD) in primary colorectal carcinomas had been detected, and their associations with clinicopathological parameters had benn studied. Methods: Fragments of TP cDNA were obtained from total RNA extracted from a fresh placenta via RT-PCR. Then it was recombinant with pGXT-4T-l expression plasmid. After induction and purification of GST-TP fusion protein, the protein was injected into New Zealand rabbits to produce anti-TP antibody. Then the specificity of the anti-TP polyclonal antibody was identified. Immune staining of TP and CD31 were conducted on 62 paraffine-embeded specimens of colorectal carcinoma using of the polyclonal antibody and CD31 monoclonal antibody. The relationships between clinicopathological characteristics of the patients and the results of immune staining were analyzed by SSPS 8.0 software. Results: In these 62 specimens, 30 cases were TP-positive only in tumor strome, 5 cases TP-positive only in maligant epithelium, and 13 cases in both strome and malignant epithelium. 48 cases were TP-positive (77.4%). The TP-positive cells were predominantly in tumor strome (43/48, 69.4%)...