Correlation between expression of vascular endothelial growth factor-C and lymph node metastasis in gastric cancer / 中华消化杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To investigate the correlation between the expression of vascular endothelial growth factor-C(VEGF-C) and lymph node metastasis in gastric cancer. Methods The expression of VEGF-C was detected in 30 pairs of fresh primary gastric cancers and their adjacent normal tissues from the same patients by semi-quantitative reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and immunohistochemistry. Automated image analyzer was used to quantify VEGF-C expression, which was reflected by positive index (PI). Results VEGF-C was highly expressed in gastric cancer cells,whilst its expression was undetectable in adjacent normal tissues. VEGF-C expression was higher in lymph node metastasis group(PI=1.345?0.079) and lymphatic invasive(PI=1.315?0.037) group than that in no-metastasis group(PI=1.156?0.045) and no-invasive group (PI=1.154?0.043)(P