Search Of The Mutation Of β-Catenin Gene And Its Products In Pancreatic Tumors

[Objective] The Wnt signaling pathway plays a critical role in bothembryonic development and tumorigenesis. It has been shown that disturbances of the Wnt signal transduction pathway were significantly related to human neoplastic transformation. Deregulation of the Wnt signaling by β —catenin and adenomatous polyposis coli (APC) mutation results in , β—catenin accumulation and transcriptional activation of specific target genes such as cyclinD1 and c-myc contributing significantly to neoplastic transformation and carcinogenesis. The core mechanism of the pathway abnormality was the accumulation of free β—catenin protein in the cytoplasm and nucleus resulting in the expressions of specific target genes by downstream pathway. By examing the expression of β —catenin, cyclinD1 protein and the alterations of β — catenin gene exon 3,to investigate the relationship between the abnormal expression of β—catenin, high expression of cyclinD1, the alterations of β— catenin gene and occurance, development and infiltration of the solid-pseudopapillary tumor of pancreas, expecting to find new assistant signs to distinguish solid-pseudopapillary tumor of pancreas and islet cell tumor ,and to provide experimental basis of clinical pathology .[Methods] By using of immunohistochemical streptavidin-peroxidase(sp) and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and DNA direct sequencing method to examine the expression of β—catenin and cyclinD1 in 20 cases of the solid-pseudopapillary tumor of pancreas, 10 cases of the islet cell tumors of...