Expression And Clinical Significance Of E-selectin, SLeX And SLeA In Hepatocellular Carcinoma

BackgroundHepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is one of the most common malignancies worldwide. About one million new cases of HCC have been found every year. Its curative effect is very poor, and the average survival rate of five years is only about 7%.HCC is the second killer of cancer in China, and China take possession of 50% in the world. Surgery remains the best way for a curative therapy of HCC. However, tumor recurrence and metastas is the main obstacles to improve prognosis. So, preventing the recurrence and metastasis after sugery is a very important step to improve the prognosis of HCC. And predicting and founding the recurrence and metastasis of tumor earlier seems more imporment.Currently, researches suggest that the invision of portal vein is the foundation of HCC metastasis and the incidence rate is about 40%.The prognosis is very poor and the median survival time is merely 2.7-4 months. The formation mechanism and treatment method of HCC portal vein tumor thrombus (PVTT) in under futher study as so far.The adhesion between tumor cells and specified vascular endothelial cells is one of the crucial procedures of tumor specified metastasis, and the expression of cellular adhesion molecules(CAMs) plays a very important role. Among these E-Selectin and its legends, sLeX(sialyl Lewis X)and sLeA(sialyl Lewis A), are major studied now, and are playing very important roles in the tumor recurrence and metastas. But the synchronization issue of these index have not found.Therefore, we hypothesis if there is a mechanism that the portal vein endothelial cells excrete E-Selectin. The endothelial cells adhere to the tumor cells by the recognition and binding of E-selectin and its ligands slex,slea of tumor cell surface. The receptor-ligand interactions contribute to the immigration and establishment of tumor, and form the metastasis.We detected the expression of E-Selectin, sLeX and sLeA in the tissue of HCC by immunohistochemistry, and compared the clinical feature of patients. The dependablity is analyised and the role of HCC biological behaviour is evaluated. It can provied foundational experiment support the preventing and curing of HCC recurrence and metastas, and predicting the prognosis of HCC patients.ObjectiveTo study the expression of E-selectin, sLeX and sLeA in HCC tissue and their relations with clinical feature.MethodsDetect the expression of E-selectin, sLeX and sLeA in 78 patients'HCC tissue by immunohistochemistry, gather and statistics the clinical data of these 78 patients, compare the clinical featuer with E-selectin, sLeX and sLeA one by one. ResultsThe positive rate of E-Selectin in vascular endothelia cells adjacent to cancer nest is 70.51%, the expression of E-Selectin in the HCC tissues is significantly correlated with pathology grade, PVTT, preoperative extrahepatic metastasis, and satellite foci, but not correlated with the size of tumor, serum AFP, the postoperation recurrance of tumor within three months, and life span.The positive rate of sLeX in tumor cells is 64.10%, the expression of sLeX in the HCC tissues is significantly correlated with PVTT, preoperative extrahepatic metastasis,satellite foci, the postoperation recurrance of tumor within three months, and life span, but not correlated with pathology grade, the size of tumor, and serum AFP.The positive rate of sLeA in tumor cells is 69.23%, the expression of sLeA in the HCC tissues is significantly correlated with PVTT, preoperative extrahepatic metastasis, satellite foci, the postoperation recurrance of tumor within three months, and life span, but not correlated with pathology grade, the size of tumor, and serum AFP.ConclusionE-selectin, sLeX and sLeA are closely correlated with clinical feature such as prognosis and PVTT, and play an invasive role in HCC.