Expression Of VEGF-C In Cervical Carcinoma And Its Relation To Lymphatic Metastasis

Objective: To study the expression of vascular endothelial growth factor-C (VEGF-C) in normal uterial cervix, cervical intraepithelial neoplasia(CIN) and carcinoma of cervix uteri with or without lymphatic metastasis, analyze its role in invasion of tumor cells and investigate the possibility to be a prognosis marker.Methods: We collected 84 samples including normal uterial cervix tissues, cervical intraepithelial neoplasia(CIN) tissues and carcinoma of cervix uteri tissues .They were divide into several groups according to lymphatic metastasis, differentiation and clinical stage. VEGF-C was stained immunohistochemically and visualized using the ×10, ×20 and ×40 objectives of microscope.Results: 1.Age as a mixed factor was excluded.2.The expression rates of VEGF-C were gradually increased with the progress cervical lesions.VEGF-C was detected mainly in cytoplasm or cytomembrane of tumor cell. The positive expression was also visualized in lymphatic vessel and blood vessel near the cancer cells.3.The expression of VEGF-C was higher in cervical cancer with lymphatic metastasis than that without lymphatic metastasis. The difference between two groups was significant ( P<0.05).4.There did not exsist correlation between the expression of VEGF-C and clinical stage.5.The expression of VEGF-C had negative correlation with the pathologic grade of cervical carcinoma.The expression of VEGF-C in low differentiation group was significantly higher than that in middle/high differentiation groups(P<0.05).VEGF-C could be excreted by tumor cell derived from epithelia and basal lamina cell , binding with lymphatic vessel endothelial cell .So the action on lymphatic vessel endothelial cell was mainly by paracrine. In this study the expression of VEGF-C in cervical carcinoma was detected in the plasm of tumor cell, and the color observed was yellow. The express of VEGF-C was gradually increased during the period of the neoplastic development. Some cases without lymphatic metastasis was observed to have expression of VEGF-C, the explain of this phenomenon was that those cases was still in subclinical stage. In group with high differentiation, the expression of VEGF-C was mainly lied aroud carcinoma tissue. The lower the differentiation was, the stronger the expression was, and the distribution was dispersed. The specific action of VEGF-C to lymphatic vessel endothelial cell was verificated in many experiments. Our study confirmed there was close relationship between VEGF-C and cervical carcinoma. In addition, we also found that it was not clinical stage but pathology stage had relationship with VEGF-C, which suggested that VEGF-C could suppress the differentiation of carcinoma cell.Conclusion: 1.The expression of VEGF-C in normal cervical epithelia, CIN, and cervical carcinoma was gradually increased ,which suggested that VEGF-C could accelerate the development of cervical carcinoma. 2.The positive rate of VEGF-C in cervical carcinoma with lymphatic metastasis was significantly high, which suggested that VEGF-C could promote the generation of lymphatic vessel, so that accelerate the metastisis and invasion of cervical carcinoma. 3.The expression of VEGF-C had correlation with the pathology grade of tumor, which suggested that it could suppress the differentiation of cancer. 4. Considering the close relationship between the expression of VEGF-C and lymphatic metastisis, examining the expression of VEGF-C in the biopsy tissues of cervical carcinoma could be applied in clinical work to estimate the prognosis of cancer, and provide the therapy with new tactics.