The Importance of Low E-cadherin Expression for Epithelial Mesenchymal Transition (EMT) in Pulmonary Pleomorphic Carcinoma

Abstract

Background: Epithelial-mesenchymal transition is an important step in the invasion and metastasis of cancer cells in various cancer types. The aim of this study is to evaluate immunohistochemical staining with E-cadherin in patients with pleomorphic carcinoma (PC), which is a group of advanced lung tumors, to decide the correlation between clinicopathological parameters and to determine the prognostic significance of the results. Materials and Methods:Materials and data of 56 cases diagnosed with PC between January 2011 and December 2018 were evaluated. Expressions of E-cadherin applied to tumor sections of resection materials were evaluated. Immunohistochemically, data were collected under two groups as low and high according to E-cadherin staining results. The results obtained were compared with clinicopathological findings and prognostic factors.Results: Forty-five of the fifty-six cases were male (80.36%) and 11 were female (19.64%), their age ranged from 44 to 83 years and the average age was 64.12 years. When expressions of E-cadherin were evaluated, loss of expression of E-cadherin (low expression) was observed in 47 (83.9%) cases. When the disease-free survival time was examined, it was found that the mean time (12 months) in 35 cases was below. No statistically significant correlation was found between the immunohistochemically E-cadherin expressions and other clinicopathological parameters. Our study showed that low E-cadherin expression or loss of E-cadherin expression in spindle and/or giant cell areas has a poor prognostic factor on disease-free survival (p=0.001).Conclusion: E-cadherin loss has been observed in cases of PC, especially in spindle and/or giant cell areas, and has been associated with shorter disease-free survival. Expression loss of E-cadherin was accepted as a poor prognostic factor. Expression of E-cadherin can be used to evaluate the prognostic potential in PCs with poorly progressive groups.