RESUMO
BACKGROUND AND AIM: There is growing interest in how integrins play a role in cancer disease biology and what applications these may have in anti-cancer therapeutic development. This study investigates integrin αvß5 expression in non-small cell lung carcinoma (NSCLC) and its correlations with clinical information. METHODS: Tumor human tissue microarrays of 147 radically operated Chinese NSCLC patients were retrieved from the pathology archive, and sections were autoimmune stained along with positive and negative controls. Integrin αvß5 (P1F6) mouse monoclonal antibody were validated by both Western blotting and immunoreactivity on the same set of cell pellets, according to a precedent of expression levels in cell flow cytometry. The immunoreactivity of all patients' cases against integrin αvß5 antibody was graded in a semi-quantitative manner by two pathologists blind to any patient data. RESULTS: Overall survival significantly correlated to integrin αvß5 immunoreactivity by Cox regression analysis with P = 0.032. When applying Kaplan-Meier to analyze the comparison between positive and negative expression on lymph node metastasis patients, P = 0.082. Therefore, integrin αvß5 expression emerges as a significant prognostic factor for NSCLC. In total, 39 of 147 (26.5%) showed an integrin αvß5 immunoreactivity positive, as it ranged from 6.1% in squamous cell carcinoma to 19.7% in adenocarcinoma. This expression correlated significantly with histological subtypes (P = 0.007), tumor node metastasis classification of malignant tumors (P = 0.027) and lymph node metastases (P = 0.006). CONCLUSION: This study support the hypothesis that integrin αvß5 is a prognostic biomarker and correlates to metastasis with therapeutic development potential in NSCLC.