[Immunohistochemical study on the expression of E-cadherin in normal tissues and squamous cell carcinomas of the...

The expression of epithelial cadherin (E-cadherin) was immunohistochemically analyzed in normal tissues and squamous cell carcinomas of the uterine cervix and investigated clinicopathologically in relation to factors including the histological type, clinical stage (FIGO), tumor invasion and lymph node metastasis. The following results were obtained. (1) In normal cervix, E-cadherin was found at the cell to cell borders in both squamous and columnar epithelia, but not in stromal tissues. (2) In 38 patients with cervical cancer, 6 patients exhibited homogeneous staining of E-cadherin, while 32 showed heterogeneous expression, suggesting that cell to cell adhesion is not uniform in most cases. (3) In cases with large cell non-keratinizing squamous cell carcinoma invading to a depth exceeding 2/3 of the cervix, a significantly higher frequency of heterogeneous expression of E-cadherin was seen (p less than 0.05). (4) Patients who had cancer invasion exceeding 2/3 of the cervix with heterogeneous expression tended to have a high incidence of nodal metastasis. These results indicate that the expression of E-cadherin in cancer may be one of the factors most responsible for the process of invasion and metastasis in cervical cancer.