Expression Of Ezrin Protein And C-met In Human Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma And Its Clinical Significance

Background Esophageal carcinoma is one of most cancers in human. The incidence and mortality from it ranks the second among all cancers worldwide. The tumurigenesis of esophageal carcinoma is a multistep, multifactor and evolutional process.the most important reason of mortality from esophageal carcinoma is its invasion and metastasis. Usually, the invasion and metastasis can be divided into three steps: adhersion, extracellual matrix degradation and mobility. The mobility of carcinoma cell needs correspodence with polarization, stretch, adhersion, de-adhersion, wining and so on.many proteions are involved in the regulation of mobility. Ezrin protein was found a new protein that it has relations with invasions and metastasis of carcinoma recently.Objective This study was to find the relationship between ezrin and c-met and esophageal carcinoma by checking the expression of ezrin and c-met in esophageal carcinoma, to provide new reference for forecast the carcinogenesis, invasions, metastasis of carcinoma and prognosis judgement, and to investigate the probable mechanism of tumor's metastasis.Material and methods Fifty pathologically confirmed and surgically resected esophageal carcinoma, and fifty carcinoma surrounding tissue samples. The expression of ezrin and c-met were examined by immunohistochmical (S-P) method. The correlation of each score according to the intensity and percentage of labeled cells or intercellular substance with relevant clinical date was statistically analyzed.Results In normal esophageal squamous, the positive expression of Ezrin protein was 34.0%, the positive expression of c-met was 8.0%. In esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, the positive expression of Ezrin protein was 76.0%, the positive expression of c-met was 58.0%. The positive rate of Ezrin protein in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma was obviously higher than its in normal esophageal squamous . The positive rate of c-met protein in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma was higher than its in normal esophageal squamous. The expression of Ezrin protein has close relation to depth of invasion and lymph node metastasis. The positive rate of c-met protein expression in lymph node metastasis was obviously higher than those without lymph node metastasis. The expression of Ezrin protein in c-met positive cases was obviously higher than those of c-met negative cases.Conclusions The test of ezrin and c-met protein may have significant prognostic value for assessingthe degree of malignancy and potential lymph node metastatic probability of ESCC.Ezrin protein has hopes to become a new target to evaluate the tumor prognosis.