The Clinical Pathological Significance Of MMP-26 And P63 Protein Expression In Esophageal Squamous Cell Carcinoma

Objective: The Purpose of the experiment is to detect the expression of the MMP-26 protein and p63 protein in normal esophageal mucosa and esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, and analyze the relationship between the expression of MMP-26 protein and p63 protein in patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma and their gender, age and tumor size, histological differentiated degree and clinical stage, and lymph node metastasis. In addition, we explore the clinical pathological significance of MMP-26 protein and p63 protein expression in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma and hope that we can provide more experimental data and theoretical foundations for the diagnosis, therapy and prognosis of the esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.Methods:1 We used immunohistochemistry(IHC) SP method detected the expression of the MMP-26 protein and p63 protein in normal esophageal mucosa and esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.2 SPSS19.0 was applied to analyze the data of the experiments.Results:1 The positive expression rate of the MMP-26 protein in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma was 74%(37/50), which was significantly higher than that in normal esophageal mucosa tissue with 5%(1/20). The difference in the expression of the MMP-26 protein between the two groups was significant(P<0.05). There was no relationship between the expressions of MMP-26 and the patients’ gender with esophagus cancer(P>0.05). However, there were significant differences in the expressions of MMP-26 and the patients’ age, tumor size, histological differentiated degree,lymph node metastasis and clinical stage in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma(P<0.05).2 The positive expression rate of p63 in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma was 76.0%(38/50), which was significantly higher than that in normal esophageal mucosa tissue with 45.0%(9/20). The difference in the expression of the p63 protein between the two groups was significant(P<0.05). There was no relationship between the expressions of p63 and gender, age and clinical stage of the patients with esophagus cancer(P>0.05). Nevertheless, there were significant positive correlation in the expressions of p63 and the patients’ tumor size, lymph node metastasis, but there was a significant negative correlation with histological differentiated degree in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma(P<0.05).3 Thirty two out of fifty patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma were positively expressed both the MMP-26 protein and p63 protein, in other words, the positive expression rate of the MMP-26 protein and p63 protein was 64% in this study. And seven of the all patients(14%) were neither expressed MMP-26 protein nor p63 protein. There is positive correlation between the positive expressions of MMP-26 protein and p63 protein in 50 detected cases of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, and correlation coefficient is 0.414.Conclusions:1 The overexpression of the MMP-26 protein and p63 protein in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma are possibly relevant to the tumorigenesis and progress of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.2 The fact that the positive expression rate of the MMP-26 protein and p63 protein in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma maybe related to the tumor size, invasion, histological differentiated degree and metastasis of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma. Thus, they could be as tumor markers for the prediction of tumor size, invasion, histological differentiated degree and metastasis of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma in the future clinical practice.3 The abnormal expressions of MMP-26 protein are positively correlated with p63 protein in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma, which indicated that there are possibly synergistic effects between the MMP-26 protein and p63 protein in the tumorigenesis and progress of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.