Department of Thoracic Surgery Cancer Center, Sun Yat-sen University, 651, Dongfeng Road East, 510060, Guangzhou, People's Republic of China.
J Cancer Res Clin Oncol. 2010 Aug;136(8):1213-9. doi: 10.1007/s00432-010-0771-5. Epub 2010 Feb 3.
Expression of CD44 and its variants has been shown to be relevant to tumor progression in various human malignancies. We evaluated the expression of CD44v6 in the primary lesions of stage I non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) and correlated the expression level to its prognosis.
The expression of CD44v6, measured by immunohistochemistry, was assessed in the tumor specimens from 190 patients with stage I NSCLC. Each slide was assigned a score: the average of the score of tumor cells staining multiplied by the score of staining intensity. And depending on the cut-off score based on receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis, the CD44v6 expression was categorized into high- and low-level groups, which were then correlated directly with the clinical outcomes.
The high expression of CD44v6 was detected more frequently in the squamous cell carcinoma (38 of 71 patients, 53.5%) than in the other types of carcinoma (p < 0.05). The Kaplan-Meier survival curves showed that high level expression of CD44v6 indicated a better post-operative survival (p = 0.006), especially for stage IB disease (p = 0.049) and squamous cell carcinoma (p = 0.029). The multivariate analysis also confirmed that the expression of CD44v6 was an independent prognostic indicator (p = 0.011).
CD44v6 might be correlated with histogenesis of NSCLC, and its decreased expression may be an adverse prognostic indicator for the patients with stage I NSCLC, especially for those with stage IB diseases. Patients of this subgroup might need adjuvant therapy additionally.
已有研究表明 CD44 及其变体的表达与多种人类恶性肿瘤的肿瘤进展相关。我们评估了 CD44v6 在 I 期非小细胞肺癌（NSCLC）患者原发肿瘤中的表达，并将其表达水平与其预后相关联。
通过免疫组织化学评估了 190 例 I 期 NSCLC 患者肿瘤标本中 CD44v6 的表达。每张切片的评分：肿瘤细胞染色评分的平均值乘以染色强度评分。并根据基于受试者工作特征（ROC）曲线分析的截断评分，将 CD44v6 表达分为高表达和低表达组，然后与临床结局直接相关联。
在鳞状细胞癌（38/71 例，53.5%）中更频繁地检测到 CD44v6 的高表达，而在其他类型的癌中则较少见（p < 0.05）。Kaplan-Meier 生存曲线显示，CD44v6 的高水平表达预示着术后更好的生存（p = 0.006），尤其是对于 IB 期疾病（p = 0.049）和鳞状细胞癌（p = 0.029）。多变量分析也证实 CD44v6 的表达是独立的预后指标（p = 0.011）。
CD44v6 可能与 NSCLC 的组织发生有关，其低表达可能是 I 期 NSCLC 患者的不良预后指标，尤其是对于 IB 期疾病的患者。这一亚组患者可能需要额外的辅助治疗。
