Aim
There is growing interest in how integrins play a role in cancer disease biology and what applications these may have in anti-cancer therapeutic development. This study investigates integrin αvβ5 expression in non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC) and its correlations with clinical information.
Conclusion
This study support the hypothesis that integrin αvβ5 is a prognostic biomarker and correlates to metastasis with therapeutic development potential in NSCLC.
Methods
Tumor human tissue microarrays of 147 radically operated Chinese NSCLC patients were retrieved from the pathology archive, and sections were autoimmune stained along with positive and negative controls. Integrin αvβ5 (P1F6) mouse monoclonal antibody were validated by both Western blotting and immunoreactivity on the same set of cell pellets, according to a precedent of expression levels in cell flow cytometry. The immunoreactivity of all patients' cases against integrin αvβ5 antibody was graded in a semi-quantitative manner by two pathologists blind to any patient data.
Results
Overall survival significantly correlated to integrin αvβ5 immunoreactivity by Cox regression analysis with P = 0.032. When applying Kaplan-Meier to analyze the comparison between positive and negative expression on lymph node metastasis patients, P = 0.082. Therefore, integrin αvβ5 expression emerges as a significant prognostic factor for NSCLC. In total, 39 of 147 (26.5%) showed an integrin αvβ5 immunoreactivity positive, as it ranged from 6.1% in squamous cell carcinoma to 19.7% in adenocarcinoma. This expression correlated significantly with histological subtypes (P = 0.007), tumor node metastasis classification of malignant tumors (P = 0.027) and lymph node metastases (P = 0.006).