ABSTRACT
Purpose To investigate the expression of tumor buds and its relationship with clinicopathological characteristics in endome-trial carcinoma. Methods 47 cases of endometrial carcinoma were observed and analyzed by means of clinicopathologic data and im-munohistochemical staining. The connections between tumor buds and clinicopathologic parameters were studied by statistics. Results Of the 47 endometrial carcinoma cases, tumor buds were seen in 18 cases. Tumor buds were correlated with histological grade, lymph node metastases, vascular invasion, Ki-67 index and survival. There were no associations between tumor buds with age, tumor size, pTNM stage or myometrial invasion depth. Immunohistochemistry demonstrated that the level of N-cadherin, vimentin in bud cells was higher than normal carcinoma cells while the level of CK(AE1/AE3),β-catenin and E-cadherin got the opposite results. Conclu-sion Tumor buds may play an important role in the progression of endometrial carcinoma. The immunohistochemical features of bud cells indicated that tumor buds may be a key step in epithelial-mesenchymal transition.