Expression And Clinical Significance Of CD44v6,MMP-9 And Oct4 In Breast Cancet

Objective:The expression of CD44v6, MMP-9 and Oct4 in breast cancer and the pathologic characteristics of breast cancer were detected to investigate the effectiveness of CD44v6, MMP-9 and Oct4 in the development, invasion and metastasis of breast cancer. The relation of these three factors was also discussed. The aim was to understand the mechanism involving breast cancer and breast stem cells, and to provide theoretical evidences for clinical breast cancer diagnosis and treatment.Methods:The expression of CD44v6, MMP-9 and Oct4 proteins were detected in 37 cases of breast invasive ductal carcinoma by S-P immunohistochemical technique. The results were assessed by the method in accordance with Liangzhong Xu's. The patients'age, tumor size and lymphatic matastasis were analyzed by clinical pathologic method. Statistical analysis was performed by SPSS 11.5 statistical software. Data was analyzed by Fisher probabilities in 2×2 table, the chi-square test, and Spearma interclass correlation analysis.Results:1. The expression of CD44v6, MMP-9 and Oct4 were respectively located in cell membrane, cytoplasm and cytoplasm in breast invasive ductal carcinoma, positive expression were respectively 54.1%, 59.5% and 43.2%.2. The positive expression of CD44v6 and MMP-9CD44v6 were correlated with tumor grading and lymph node metastasis (P<0.05), and were not evidently correlated with patients'age, tumor size, positive or negative ER and PR (P>0.05).3. Oct4 was correlated with tumor grading( P < 0.05) , and not evidently correlated with patients'age, tumor size, positive or negative ER and PR (P>0.05).4. By Spearman interclass correlation analysis, the expression of CD44v6 was directly correlated with that of MMP-9(rs=0.703,P<0.01),the expression of Oct4 was not evidently correlated with those of CD44v6 and MMP-9 (P >0.05).Conclusion:1.The expression of CD44v6 was different due to whether there was axillary node metastasis in breast cancer or not, and tumor grading difference, that is, CD44v might promote axillary node metastasis of breast cancer and the expression enhanced with tumor grading increasing.2. The expression of MMP-9 enhanced obviously with tumor grading increasing, which showed that poorly differentiated cancer cells were of high potential to induce the expression of MMP-9, and therefore was of high invasion ability and took an important role in tumor growth, invasion and metastasis.3. The expression of CD44v6 in tumor cells indicated that there were a number of multipotential poorly differentiated or undifferentiated tumor cells with stem cell property in breast carcinoma tissues with different pathologic grading. The positive expression intensity of CD44v6 in breast carcinoma tissues increased with carcinoma cell differentiation level descending. The lower tumor cell differentiation level, the more tumor cell genetic structure and phenotype were similar to primitive immature stem cells, which illustrated that breast carcinoma tissues with relative high malignant potential had more tumor cells with stem cell property.4.The expression of CD44v6 being significantly directly correlated with that of MMP-9, which indicated that both of CD44v6 and MMP-9 played an important part in the progress of the metastasis of breast invasive ductal carcinoma, and they could serve as important molecular makers of invasion and metastasis of breast carcinoma. Blocking the expression of CD44v6 and MMP-9 could provide a direction to breast cancer therapy. The mechanism might be that because of CD44v6 and MMP-9, tumor cells had the ability to detach each other easily and degrade basement membrane and extracellular matrix to make tumor cells break through various barriers in invasion and metastasis progress, for example, basement membrane of epithelial cells, basement membrane of blood vessels, and to make cell adhesion ability enhanced and metastasis easily occur.