Abstract
BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVE: precious studies proven that the overexpression of eukaryotic translation initiation factor 4E (eIF4E) in a variety of solid tumors has linked with malignant tumorigenesis, invasion and metastasis. The aim of this work is to explore the expression of eIF4E and its clinical significance in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) through immunohistochemical method. METHODS: seventy NSCLC specimens were constructed into tissue microarray, simultaneously took 19 cases adjacent tissues and 20 cases normal lung tissue as control, all performed using immunohistochemistry (Envision). RESULTS: eIF4E expression in NSCLC was significantly higher than that in adjacent tissues and normal lung tissues, statistically significant difference between the groups. The eIF4E positive expression in lymph node metastasis group was significantly higher than that in no-lymph node metastasis. eIF4E protein positive expression of WD/MD cancer tissue was significantly lower than those in PD/ND cancer tissue. There were no significant differences of positive expression of eIF4E with the tumor diameter, age, smoking status, gender of NSCLC patients (P > 0.05). CONCLUSIONS: there were highly over expression rate of eIF4E, and closely correlated with lymphnode metastasis in NSCLC, which implies that the eIF4E expression may be related to tumorgenesis, invasion and metastasis of lung cancer. eIF4E may be a new marker for lung cancer and objective indicators assessing the development of lung cancer.