Objective: The aims of our study were to assess the expression of vascular endothelial cadherin (VE-cadherin) and epithelial cadherin (E-cadherin) in human non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) tissues and to correlate these expression levels with the cliniopathological characteristics of NSCLC. Methods: The expression levels of VE-cadherin and E-cadherin were examined by immunohistochemistry in NSCLC tissues from 39 patients and in 30 adjacent non-neoplastic tissues that were at least 5 cm away from the tumor tissues. Results: The positive rates of VE-cadherin and E-cadherin in NSCLC were 51.3% (20/39) and 43.6% (17/39),respectively. The positive rate of E-cadherin in NSCLC was lower than in adjacent non-neoplastic tissues (73.3,22/30, P<0.05). The VE-cadherin expression level correlated with lymph node metastasis (P<0.05) while the E-cadherin expression level inversely correlated with lymph node metastasis (P<0.05). Conclusions: We demonstrated the aberrant expression of VE-cadherin in NSCLC and the downregulation of E-cadherin expression. Both of these proteins are associated with lymph node metastasis. These results indicate that both of these proteins may take part in the growth and metastasis of NSCLC and thus may be therapeutic targets for the treatment of NSCLC.
Chen et al. (Thu,) studied this question.