Lymphangiogenesis And Its Relationship To The Prognosis And The Expression Of Tumor Markers In Colorectal Cancer

Objective: To investigate the feature of lymphangiogenesis in human colorectal cancer (CRC), and its relationship to prognosis and the expression of some tumor markers. Methods: The case reports of 37 patients diagnosed with colorectal cancer at Beijing ChaoYang Hospital, Third Hospital of Hebei Medical University and Peking University First Hospital between 1990 and 1999 were reviewed. All of their tumor samples obtained from surgery were formalin-fixed and paraffin-embedded and were made into serial sections (5 μm).These sections were stained immunohistochemistically by Prox-1 monoclonal antibody in order to mark the lymphatic vessels within the tissues by which facilitate the lymphatic vessels density (LVD)counting. Comparing tumor LVD of each case to their pathological categories, differentiation, depth of infiltrating, lymphatic node metastasis, Duke's staging and recurrence et al statistically to investigate the feature of lymphangiogenesis in human colorectal cancer and its relationship to prognosis and the expression of some tumor related genes. Results: Expression of Prox-1 was detected in the lymphatic endothelial cells (LEC) clearly and specifically, while negative expression were found in blood vessel endothelial cells, which means Prox-1 is a successful marker for LECs assessments from blood vessels. Thin and small lymphatic vessels were found intratumorally,bigger and dilated ones were found peritumorally or juxtumorally, lymphatic vessels within folliculus lymphaticus were more like those intratumorally but dilated occasionally. Some of these vessels were infiltrating/ed by several tumor cells. The average LVD was 6.6486±6.15637 per high power field. Statistical analysis: there was no significant difference between LVD and pathological categories, differentiation, hepatic metastasis, recurrence, but there was significant correlation between LVD and depth of infiltrating(p=0.037),lymph node metastasis(p=0.022) and highly significant correlation with Duke's staging ( p=0.005 ) . Significant relationship between p53 and LVD as well as CD44, but no relationship to k-ras, CEA, nm23H1, EGF, EGFR and APC. Conclusion: These results suggested that lymphangiogenesis do exist in CRC, and also play an important role in tumor infiltrating and metastasis, which should be regarded as one of prognosis indicator. As to the expression of...