Relationship Between TLR4 Expression And Angiogenesis In Adenocarcinoma Of Esophagogastric Junction

Background: During the past decades,Adenocarcinoma of esophagogastric junction(AEG)has been presenting a obvious upward trend.Adenocarcinoma of esophagogastric junction belongs to a highly malignant tumor and is easy for metastasis.Being different from esophageal adenocarcinoma and gastric adenocarcinoma,AEG has been demonstrated to have a unique pathogenesis and epidemiological feature and thus attracted more and more interest from people all around the world.Nevertheless,research concerning AEG in our country is still limited.The role of Toll-like receptor family(TLR)in tumors has become a new hotspot of study,changing people's attention from its already known functions in inflammation transferred to its likely mechanism in tumor pathogenesis,which may lead to a new method in curing tumors.TLR4,the first discoverd TLR family proteins in humans,is currently one of the most closely tumor-relating protein and has a high expression level in many malignant tumors.Objective:To investigate the effects of Toll-like receptor 4 overexpression in human AEJ and the relationship between TLR4 overexpression and angiogenesis.Methods: Through retrospective analysis,a total of 43 surgically resected human AEJ specimens tissues were investigated for TLR4 protein expression by immunohistochemical SP methods,using CD34 antibody to mark microvascular endothelial cells and determine the microvessel density(MVD)?The correlation among TLR4 protein expression and MVD and clinicopathologic features of AEG were analyzed.Results: TLR4 protein positive expression rate was 69.8%,rate of 82.6% in group A(which was metastasis and recurrence)was significantly higher than the control group B(P<0.05).TLR4 protein positive expression rate in the cases with lymph node metastasis(79.3%)was significantly higher than that in the cases without lymph node metastasis(50.0%)(P=0.05).TLR4 protein positive expression rate in the patients with stage III and IV of TNM classification was 82.8%.which was significantly higher than that in the patients with stage I and II(42.9%,P<0.05).MVD was closely related to TNM stage of AEG(P=0.008).There was a strong positive correlation between TLR4 protein expression and MVD(P=0.012).There was no relevant statistic meaning among tumor grade,size,vascular metastasis,neural invasion.Conclusions: TLR4 expression was closely related to the progression of tumor and prognosis of patients and might be related to the promotion of tumor angiogenesis.