Expression and prognostic relevance of CD44v6 in stage I non-small cell lung carcinoma.
OBJECTIVE
Expression of CD44 and its variants has been shown to be relevant to tumor progression in various human malignancies. We evaluated the expression of CD44v6 in the primary lesions of stage I non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and correlated the expression level to its prognosis.


METHODS
The expression of CD44v6, measured by immunohistochemistry, was assessed in the tumor specimens from 190 patients with stage I NSCLC. Each slide was assigned a score: the average of the score of tumor cells staining multiplied by the score of staining intensity. And depending on the cut-off score based on receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis, the CD44v6 expression was categorized into high- and low-level groups, which were then correlated directly with the clinical outcomes.


RESULTS
The high expression of CD44v6 was detected more frequently in the squamous cell carcinoma (38 of 71 patients, 53.5%) than in the other types of carcinoma (p < 0.05). The Kaplan-Meier survival curves showed that high level expression of CD44v6 indicated a better post-operative survival (p = 0.006), especially for stage IB disease (p = 0.049) and squamous cell carcinoma (p = 0.029). The multivariate analysis also confirmed that the expression of CD44v6 was an independent prognostic indicator (p = 0.011).


CONCLUSIONS
CD44v6 might be correlated with histogenesis of NSCLC, and its decreased expression may be an adverse prognostic indicator for the patients with stage I NSCLC, especially for those with stage IB diseases. Patients of this subgroup might need adjuvant therapy additionally.
Situ
Dongrong
D
Department of Thoracic Surgery Cancer Center, Sun Yat-sen University, 651, Dongfeng Road East, 510060, Guangzhou, People's Republic of China.
Long
Hao
H
Lin
Peng
P
Zhu
Zhihua
Z
Wang
Jiang
J
Zhang
Xu
X
Xie
Zeming
Z
Rong
Tiehua
T
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D002289:Carcinoma, Non-Small-Cell Lung / Q000235:genetics* / Q000401:mortality / Q000473:pathology / Q000601:surgery; D002294:Carcinoma, Squamous Cell / Q000235:genetics / Q000401:mortality / Q000473:pathology / Q000601:surgery; D005260:Female; D015972:Gene Expression Regulation, Neoplastic; D006801:Humans; D018960:Hyaluronan Receptors / Q000235:genetics*; D007150:Immunohistochemistry; D008175:Lung Neoplasms / Q000235:genetics* / Q000401:mortality / Q000473:pathology / Q000601:surgery; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D009367:Neoplasm Staging; D018579:Patient Selection; D016016:Proportional Hazards Models; D012372:ROC Curve; D015996:Survival Rate; D055815:Young Adult
C112697:CD44v6 antigen; D018960:Hyaluronan Receptors