Institute of Pathology, Paracelsus Medical University/Salzburger Landeskliniken (SALK), 5020 Salzburg, Austria.
Cancer Cluster Salzburg, 5020 Salzburg, Austria.
Cells. 2020 Feb 20;9(2):486. doi: 10.3390/cells9020486.
Endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD) is an effective treatment of early esophageal adenocarcinomas (EACs). The decision of ESD over esophagectomy is based on clinical evaluation of tumor depth and invasion. On a molecular level, tumor invasion is strongly associated with epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT). Here, we investigated whether localized ESD-resected and surgically resected EAC samples displayed different expression profiles of EMT protein and microRNA markers and whether these different expression profiles were able to retrospectively discriminate localized and surgically resected samples. By doing this, we aimed to evaluate whether preoperative measurement of EMT marker expression might support the decision regarding ESD over surgery. The results showed that ESD-resected samples displayed an epithelial expression profile, i.e., high expression of epithelial protein markers, whereas surgically resected samples displayed high expression of mesenchymal markers. In addition, the anti-EMT microRNA-205 was significantly more expressed in ESD-resected samples, whereas we found no significant differences in the expression levels of microRNA-200 family members. Furthermore, in our retrospective approach, we have demonstrated that measurement of selected EMT markers and microRNA-205 has significant discrimination power to distinguish ESD-resected and surgically resected samples. We suggest that the assessment of EMT status of EAC samples on a molecular level may support clinical evaluation regarding the applicability of ESD.
内镜黏膜下剥离术（ESD）是治疗早期食管腺癌（EAC）的有效方法。ESD 优于食管切除术的决策基于肿瘤深度和侵袭的临床评估。在分子水平上，肿瘤侵袭与上皮间质转化（EMT）密切相关。在这里，我们研究了局部 ESD 切除和手术切除的 EAC 样本是否显示 EMT 蛋白和 microRNA 标志物的不同表达谱，以及这些不同的表达谱是否能够回溯性地区分局部和手术切除的样本。通过这样做，我们旨在评估 EMT 标志物表达的术前测量是否可能支持 ESD 优于手术的决策。结果表明，ESD 切除样本显示出上皮表达谱，即上皮蛋白标志物的高表达，而手术切除样本则显示出高表达的间充质标志物。此外，抗 EMT microRNA-205 在 ESD 切除样本中表达显著增加，而 microRNA-200 家族成员的表达水平没有显著差异。此外，在我们的回顾性方法中，我们已经证明，测量选定的 EMT 标志物和 microRNA-205 具有显著的区分能力，可以区分 ESD 切除和手术切除的样本。我们建议，对 EAC 样本的 EMT 状态进行分子水平评估可能有助于临床评估 ESD 的适用性。
