Expression Of Foxp3 In Non - Small Cell Lung Cancer And Its Significance

Background and Purpose:Lung cancer is the most frequent malignancy and the leading cause of cancer death.The disease incidence rate and case fatacity rate are advancing year by year in the world.Lung cancer has a poor prognosis and there are currently no markers to predict which patient will recur.The clinical-pathological stage is related to the prognosis of lung cancer.However,even their identical clinical-pathological stage,patients have a variable prognosis.It is shown that there are another prognostic factors,so it is necessarry to find tumor molecular and biochemical markers to be used in clinical practice that can predict the lung cancer occurrence,development and prognosis after surgical resection.Regulatory T cells (Treg)are a significant T-cell subpopulation and contribute to immunity suppression. Tumor specific CD4~+CD25~+Treg cells inhibit antitomor immune,which recruitment and expansion in tumor are one of tumor immune escape mechanisms.The forkhead box transcription factor Foxp3 is specificly expressed in T cells with regulatory properties and associated with immunity suppression of Treg.The increasing numbers of Treg in tumor microenvironment are described to be associated with poor survival of lung cancer.This study examined the prognostic effect of Foxp3 expression(reflecting the tissue content of Treg)in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC)to investigate the relationship between the expression of Foxp3 and clinical-pathological characteristic and prognosis of NSCLC.Methods and Materials:We reviewed 67 patients who had surgical resection and had neither radiotherapy nor chemotherapy before operation.Immunohistochemical analyses were performed on paraffin-embedded NSCLC tissue to examine the expression of Foxp3 which can reflect infiltrating status of Treg in lung cancer tissue. Life span was performed on 67 patients Whose lifetime were from operating date to death or to follow-up date that still survival.Software carries on data statistic processing using SPSS 12.0 for Windows.Results:1 Positive expression of Foxp3 was detected in 21 of 67(31.34%)patients,positive expression of Foxp3 in control group lung tissue was 0.00%.Positive expression of Foxp3 was not related to patient' s age and sex and tumour' s cell types,differentiated degree,turnout size,clinical.-pathological stage and lymphatic metatasis.2 Univariate survival analysis was performed on 67 patients.Clinical-pathological stage affected prognosis of NSCLC.With the upgrade of clinical-pathological stage, overall survival rate was degraded.Cell differentiation was another contributed factor. Poorly differentiated lung cancer was worse in prognosis than well differentiated lung cancer.Positive expression of Foxp3 was a disadvantageous factor which contributed to long-term survival of NSCLC ofâ… andâ…¡stage.Compared to negative expression group of NSCLC,overall survival rate of positive expression group was significantly degraded.3 COX regression analysis of several variables for overall survival was shown that clinical-pathological stage represented independent prognostic factor for overall survival in NSCLC and expression of Foxp3 was independent prognostic factor in early-stage NSCLC. Conclusions:1 Expression of Foxp3 can develop at lung cancer' s early stage.The expression of Foxp3 in lung cancer tissue may be used as an tumor biological mark for NSCLC ofâ… andâ…¡stage prognosis.2 Clinical-pathological stage represented independent prognostic factors for overall survival in NSCLC.The combination with expression of Foxp3 and clinical-pathological stage can judge patient' s prognosis preferably.3 Expression of Foxp3 might represent a surrogate mark for an immunosuppressive milieu contributing to tumor immune escape.