Expression Pattern Of Chemokine Receptor CXCR4 In Papillary Thyroid Cancer And Its Clinicopathological Significance

Objective:CXCR4, amember of the chemokine receptor family, is the receptor for CXCL12(stormal celt-derived factor-1α, SDF-1α) and has been shown to play an important role in the migrat ion, invasion, metastasis and proliferation of the malignant tumor. This study is to investigate the expression of CXCR4 and its association with the pathological features in human thyroid papillary carcinomas.Methods:By the immunchistochemical(IHC) staining analysis, we retropectivety analyzed the expression of CXCR4 in specimens from 133 cases of PTC patients and 23 cases normal thyroid tissue. And the expression of CXCR4 in 133 PTC patients was analyzed against their correlation with the clinicopathological data.Results:We observed different staining patterns of CXCR4 in PTC tumorcells: 121 showed nucleus and cytoplasm staining, 12 cytoplasm staining only. The lymphoid metastasis rates in 133 PTC cases compared with high to tow cytoplasm expression was 73％versus 45％, respectively(P=0.001).Conclusions:CXCR4 abnormal highly expressed in PTC tumor cells, and the cytoplasm expression intensity of CXCR4 was significantly correlated with the lymphoid metastasis. The results suggest that the high cytoplasm expression of CXCR4 could be used as a predictable factor of lymphoid metastasis.