Research on the expression of E-cadherin in lung cancer tumors with different histological structures

Purpose of the study. To conduct a comparative analysis of E-cadherin expression in inoperable patients with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cells and with different survival rates. Materials and methods. The study included 96 patients with inoperable NSCLC: 84 (87.5 %) men and 12 (12.5 %) women, whose average age was 62.4 ± 0.68 years. Squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) was diagnosed in 78 (81.25 %) patients, and adenocarcinoma (AC) with a tumor differentiation grade of G2-G3 in 18 (18.75 %). The patients were treated and monitored at the National Medical Research Centre for Oncology. The expression of cadherins was determined in the tumor cells of the biopsy specimens. The obtained data have been processed using the Statistica 13.0 program (StatSoftInc., USA). The studied data have been checked for compliance with the normal distribution using the Shapiro-Wilk criterion. Results. The following distribution of patients with NSCLC was noted: IIA – 2 (2.1 %), IIB – 14 (14.6 %), IIIA – 51 (53.1 %), IIIB – 29 (30.2 %), i. e. the frequency of stage III is higher than stage II (83.3 % ( n = 80) versus 16.7 % ( n = 16), p < 0.001). Fatal outcome occurred in the SCC group within 1 year in 28 patients, within 1 to 2 years – in 30, 20 patients survived for 3 years or more. For AC, these figures were 6,5 and 7 respectively. The analysis revealed that E-cadherin expression was noted in both squamous cell carcinoma and lung adenocarcinoma: Me 55 [LQ 37; UQ 65] and Me 50 [LQ 40; UQ 70], respectively. Conclusions. 1. The analysis revealed that E-cadherin expression was observed in both squamous cell carcinoma and lung adenocarcinomas without statistically significant differences between the compared groups ( p = 0.25). 2. Statistically significant differences in the levels of E-cadherin expression were noted in the biopsy samples of the 2 groups only with survival up to 1 year and up to 3 years or more ( p < 0.05).