Expression of chemokine receptor CCR7 and VEGF-C is associated with prognosis of breast carcinoma / 中国病理生理杂志

ABSTRACT

AIM: To explore the protein levels of chemokine receptor 7 (CCR7) and vascular endothelial growth factor ( VEGF)-C in breast carcinoma , and to investigate the effects of CCR 7 and VEGF-C on prognosis of breast carcinoma.METHODS:The protein expression levels of CCR 7 and VEGF-C in the breast carcinoma tissues and normal breast tissues were detected by the method of immunohistochemistry .At the same time, the relationship between clinico-pathologic characteristics and the protein expression of CCR 7 and VEGF-C in the breast carcinoma tissues was analyzed . The relationship between the protein expression of CCR 7 and VEGF-C and survival time of the breast cancer patients was estimated by Kaplan-Meier method.RESULTS:The positive expression rates of CCR 7 and VEGF-C in the breast carcino-ma tissues were significantly higher than those in the normal breast tissues (P<0.01).A positive correlation was observed between the protein expression of CCR7 and the protein expression of VEGF-C in the breast carcinoma tissues (r=0.613, P<0.01).The protein expression of CCR7 and VEGF-C was correlated with lymph node metastasis and TNM stage (P<0.05), but both were not related to patients ’ age, primary tumor size, estrogen receptor and progesterone receptor .The survival time of the patients with CCR 7 and VEGF-C positive expression was significantly shorter than that of the patients without the expression (P<0.05).CONCLUSION:The positive expression of CCR7 and VEGF-C proteins is associated with the prognosis of breast cancer , and combined detection of CCR 7 and VEGF-C protein expression levels may be helpful to judge the prognosis of breast cancer .