Expression Of IL-33/ST2 In Patients With Non-small Cell Lung Cancer And Its Clinical Significance

Part Ⅰ Expression of IL-33 in patients with non-small cell lung cancer and its clinical significanceObjective: To investigate the expression of interleukin 33(IL-33) in cancer and adjacent non-cancerous tissues from patients with non-small cell lung cancer(NSCLC).Methods: Both non-small cell lung cancer(NSCLC) tissues and their adjacent non-cancerous tissues were collected from 131 patients(81 men and 50 women, age from 32 to 77 years old, median age was 61 years old), who underwent surgical resection from March 2009 to February 2015 in the Third Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University. All surgical specimens were pathological confirmed diagnosis of NSCLC and none patient had chemotherapy or radiotherapy before operation. Real-time quantitative PCR was performed to detect the mRNA expression of IL-33 in the paired cancerous and adjacent non-cancerous tissues. In addition, immunohistochemistry was used to evaluate the expression and location of IL-33 on paraffin sections in selected 70 cases with different pathological types, to analyze the correlation of IL-33 expression with clinicopathological variables and overall survival.Results: The expression of IL-33 m RNA in cancer tissues was significantly lower than that in adjacent non-cancerous tissues. The immunohistochemical staining results showed that IL-33 protein was mainly present in bronchial epithelial cells, chondrocytes, and vascular endothelial cells, localized in the nucleus of cells, and was significantly down-regulated in NSCLC, especially in adenosquamous carcinoma. Besides, the expression of IL-33 was associated with histological type, differentiation status and pathological TNM stage, but was not associated with age, gender, tumor size or lymphatic metastasis. According to the Kaplan-Meier analysis, the expression of IL-33 mRNA was significantly associated with overall survival of patients suffering from NSCLC.Conclusion: In summary, the IL-33 mRNA expression levels were decreased in cancer tissues in patients with NSCLC, and low expression of IL-33 predicted poor prognosis in NSCLC patients. These data suggest that the tumor development may lead to cell damage and release “danger” signal, which is supposed to one of antitumor immune responses, and IL-33 may play an important role in the development of NSCLC and the direction of targeted therapy.Part Ⅱ Expression of ST2 mRNA levels in patients with non-small cell lung cancer and its significanceObjective: To analyze the expression of suppression of tumorigenicity 2(ST2) gene in cancer and adjacent non-cancerous tissues from patients with non-small cell lung cancer(NSCLC) and its clinical significance.Methods: Both non-small cell lung cancer(NSCLC) tissues and their adjacent non-cancerous tissues were collected from 131 patients(81 men and 50 women, age from 32 to 77 years old, median age was 61 years old), who underwent surgical resection from March 2009 to February 2015 in the Third Affiliated Hospital of Soochow University. All surgical specimens were pathological confirmed diagnosis of NSCLC and none patient had chemotherapy or radiotherapy before operation. Real-time quantitative PCR was performed to detect the mRNA expression of ST2 in the paired cancerous and adjacent non-cancerous tissues, and the correlations between ST2 levels and clinicopathological parameters of NSCLC patients were analyzed.Results: Compared to adjacent non-cancerous tissues, the ST2 mRNA expression levels were significantly lower in cancer tissues, especially in adenosquamous carcinoma tissues. Besides, the expression of ST2 in NSCLC was associated with histological type, differentiation status and pathological TNM stage, but was not associated with age, gender, tumor size or lymphatic metastasis.Conclusion: The ST2 mRNA expression levels were significantly reduced in cancer tissues in patients with NSCLC, which suggest that ST2 may play an important role in the development of NSCLC.