title: Nuclear expression of N-cadherin correlates with poor prognosis of nasopharyngeal carcinoma.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To investigate the aberrant expression of N-cadherin in nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) and its prognostic significance.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Immunohistochemical staining for N-cadherin protein was performed on tissue microarray (TMA) from 122 NPC patients. Cytoplasmic N-cadherin was observed in 42.6% and nuclear N-cadherin in 45.1% of NPC tissues. High expression of cytoplasmic and nuclear N-cadherin was associated with a majority of the clinicopathological variables, including lymph node metastasis, distant metastasis and clinical stage. Cytoplasmic N-cadherin was associated positively with nuclear N-cadherin expression (P = 0.000). In univariate analysis, cytoplasmic N-cadherin showed no significant impact on patient prognosis. In contrast, the overall survival was significantly shorter in patients with high nuclear N-cadherin than those with low levels of staining (P = 0.002). A high expression of nuclear N-cadherin predicted poorer survival in patients with late stage disease (P = 0.033), but not those with early tumour stage. In addition, multivariate analysis showed nuclear N-cadherin to bean independent prognostic marker for NPC patients (P = 0.024).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Nuclear N-cadherin expression may represent a valuable prognostic marker in NPC patients, especially those with late stage disease.
authors.affiliation: Cancer Research Institute, Key Laboratory for Transcriptomics and Proteomics of Human Fatal Diseases Supported by Ministry of Education and Guangdong Province, Southern Medical University, Guangzhou, China.
authors.forename: Wei-Ren
authors.initials: WR
authors.lastname: Luo
authors.forename: Ai-Bing
authors.initials: AB
authors.lastname: Wu
authors.forename: Wei-Yi
authors.initials: WY
authors.lastname: Fang
authors.forename: Si-Yi
authors.initials: SY
authors.lastname: Li
authors.forename: Kai-Tai
authors.initials: KT
authors.lastname: Yao
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D015703:Antigens, CD / Q000378:metabolism*; D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor / Q000378:metabolism*; D015820:Cadherins / Q000378:metabolism*; D002277:Carcinoma; D002467:Cell Nucleus / Q000378:metabolism; D002681:China / Q000453:epidemiology; D003593:Cytoplasm / Q000378:metabolism; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007150:Immunohistochemistry; D053208:Kaplan-Meier Estimate; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D015999:Multivariate Analysis; D000077274:Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma; D009303:Nasopharyngeal Neoplasms / Q000378:metabolism* / Q000401:mortality / Q000473:pathology; D009367:Neoplasm Staging; D011379:Prognosis; D055815:Young Adult
chemical_list: D015703:Antigens, CD; D014408:Biomarkers, Tumor; C050361:CDH2 protein, human; D015820:Cadherins