Over Expression And Significance Of P-selectin And Its Ligand SLex,CD15 In Germ Cell Tumors

Purpose: Selectin family of adhesion molecule includes several subtypes such as E-selectin, P-selectin and L-selectin. Lewis antigens are their ligands. Selectins and their ligands play a role in occurrence, development and metastasis of tumors. Germ cell tumors have some pathohistological patterns: Yolk sac tumor, Embryonal carcinoma, choriocarcinoma, immature teratoma and dysgerminoma. They are often showed in mixture. This study aims at probing expression of P-selectin and its ligands in germ cell tumors and observes whether they are in favour of judgement to germ cell tumor tissue types and their differentiation conditions.Method: LSAB immunohistochemical technique was utilized to detect the expression of P-selectin, sLex and CD 15 in 49 cases of germ cell tumors for analyzing the different expression among different pathohistological types and expression significance among different antigens.Result: P-selectin and its ligands sLex, CD 15 can be expressed in different germ cell tumors. The expression of P-selectin mainly lies in cytoplasm, and sLex, CD 15 in cell membrane or cytoplasm. The expression percentage of P-selectin in immature teratoma, dysgerminoma and Yolk sac tumor is 100%(17/17), 84.2% (16/19) and 84.6%(11/13). CD15 is 70.6% (12/17) , 57.9% (11/19) and 69.2% (9/13) individually. sLex is 100%(17/17), 94.7%(18/19) and 100%(13/13) individually. So in germ cell tumors P-selectin and its ligands sLex, CD 15 all present high expression, but no significant difference of statistics in different germ cell tumors (P>0.05). There is a trend in dysgerminoma the expression percentage of three antigens is lower than in Yolk sac tumor and in immature teratoma. And there is statistics difference between P-selectin and CD 15 in every germ cell tumor patterns (P<0.05), that shows the expression of P-selectin higher than CD 15. Both P-selectin and sLex almost present thesame expression rate. The expression of sLex is higher than CD 15. There is positive correlation between P-selectin and sLex expression (P<0.05).Conclusion: 1 P-selectin and its ligands sLex, CD15 present high expression percentage in all germ cell tumors. 2 There are no significance difference of the expression of P-selectin, sLex and CD 15 in different germ cell tumors that maybe show that they share the same origination in all germ cell tumors. The expression percentage of these antigens in dysgerminoma trends to be lower than immature teratoma and Yolk sac tumor which maybe show immature teratoma and Yolk sac tumor are more malignant than dysgerminoma, whether suggest P-selectin and its ligands playing a role in splitting of germ cell, and having something with tumor malignance. 3 The expression of p-selectin and its ligand sLex is positive correlation, and their expression is higher than CD15, showing the affinity of P-selectin to its ligand sLex is higher than that to CD15.