Correlation between the tumoral expression of beta3-integrin and outcome in cervical cancer patients who had undergone radiotherapy.
Integrins are cell-surface receptors, which mediate cell-to-cell and cell-to-extracellular matrix adhesion. Besides playing an important role in tumour angiogenesis, beta3-integrin is also expressed in several types of epithelial cancer cells. It was the purpose of the present study to evaluate the prognostic value of beta3-integrin expression in patients with cervical cancer. Biopsies were taken from 82 patients with squamous cell or adenocarcinomas of the uterine cervix who had undergone external-beam radiotherapy with or without brachytherapy. These tissue samples were analysed immunohistochemically for the expression of beta3-integrin. The impact of immunoreactivity for beta3-integrin on survival end points was assessed by univariate and multivariate analyses, and its correlation with clinicopathological characteristics evaluated by crosstabulations. beta3-integrin was expressed in 61% (50 of 82) of the patients. Kaplan-Meier curves revealed local progression-free survival, distant metastasis-free survival and cause-specific survival to be significantly shorter (P-values according to the log-rank test: 0.002, 0.04 and 0.01, respectively) in patients with beta3-integrin expression. The prognostic impact of this parameter was even higher than for other well-known prognostic parameters and remained statistically significant in the multivariate analyses. beta3-integrin, which is expressed in the majority of patients with advanced cervical cancer, has a significant prognostic impact on outcome according to univariate and multivariate analyses.
Gruber
G
G
Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Bern, Switzerland.
Hess
J
J
Stiefel
C
C
Aebersold
D M
DM
Zimmer
Y
Y
Greiner
R H
RH
Studer
U
U
Altermatt
H J
HJ
Hlushchuk
R
R
Djonov
V
V
D000230:Adenocarcinoma / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000401:mortality / Q000532:radiotherapy; D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor; D001918:Brachytherapy; D002294:Carcinoma, Squamous Cell / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000401:mortality / Q000532:radiotherapy; D018572:Disease-Free Survival; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D039661:Integrin beta3 / Q000032:analysis*; D008875:Middle Aged; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D009362:Neoplasm Metastasis; D011379:Prognosis; D016896:Treatment Outcome; D002583:Uterine Cervical Neoplasms / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000401:mortality / Q000532:radiotherapy
D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor; D039661:Integrin beta3