A comparison on expression of selected biomarkers between primary lung cancers and matched metastases

Many biomarkers have been identified to be new targeted drugs for lung cancer treatment. Their clinical outcomes are determined by their status mainly evaluated from primary cancer tissues. However, metastasis is the leading cause of death in cancer patients. It is unclear whether their status in primary cancers is similar to that in corresponding metastases. Therefore, we aimed to evaluate similarities or differences for the selected biomarker expression between primary lung cancers and matched metastases and to provide evidence for further using these targets in metastatic tumors from lung cancer. Eleven patients who had received resection of paired tissues of primary lung cancers and matched metastases were collected. The protein expression of VEGF, HIF-1α, Met, P53, TGF-β1, Cox-2 and TNF-α between paired tumors was detected by immunohistochemistry. The results showed that there was no statistical significance between primary cancers and matched metastases for the expressions of the selected biomarkers. The p values were more than 0.05. The major concordance of the selected biomarkers existed between paired primary and metastatic tumors. However, there were still minor differences. Differences in metastases compared with primary tumors were observed in respective two cases for VEGF, HIF-1α and Met, respective one case for TGF-β1, COX2 and TNFα and three cases for P53. In conclusion, there were major concordance and minor difference for each biomarker between primary lung tumors and corresponding metastases, which may have important implications for the understanding of current metastasis models and treatment of advanced lung cancers.