Expression of Twist in pancreatic carcinoma and its role in epithelial mesenchymal transition / 国际外科学杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To investigate the relationship of Twist induced epithelial mesenchymal transitions (EMT) during pancreatic carcinoma progression.Methods The expressions of Twist,N-cadherin and Vimentin proteins were tested by immunohistochemistry in 42 cases of pancreatic carcinomas and 26 cases of adjacent paracancerous tissues.Results The positive rates of Twist,N-cadherin and Vimentin in 42 cases of pancreatic carcinomas were 76.2％,59.5％ and 57.1％,respectively.The positive rate of Twist,N-cadherin and Vimentin were all significant between pancreatic carcinomas and paired tumor-adjacent paracancerous tissues (all P ＜0.001).The differences of the expression of Twist,N-cadherin and Vimentin in pancreatic carcinoma of tumor differentiation,TNM stage,neural invasion and lymph node metastasis were significant (all P ＜ 0.05).Significantly positive correlation was found between the expression of Twist and the others (N-cadherin and Vimentin) by using spearman correlation analysis (r =0.506,P =0.001 ; r =0.417,P =0.006).Significantly positive correlation was found between the expression of N-cadherin and Vimentin by using spearman correlation analysis(r =0.462,P =0.002).Conclusions Twist signaling pathway activation might mediate pancreatic epithelial cells to EMT and then promote pancreatic carcinoma invasion and metastasis.