Clinical study on the expression of urokinase plasminogen activator and urokinase plasminogen activator receptor in pancreatic cancer

Objective Study the significance of the expression of urokinase plasminogen activator (uPA) and urokinase plasminogen activator receptor (uPAR) in pancreatic cancer. Methods The expression of uPA,uPAR mRNA and protein antigen was detected by reverst transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and immunohistochemi-stry in 85 cases of pancreatic cancer and 10 cases of pancreatitis tissue.Expression density of uPA,uPAR in each group was analyzed with HPIAS image analyzer compared with t test,the correlation between the expression level of uPA,uPAR and malignancy was tested with Chi-square. Results The expression of uPA,uPAR mRNA and antigen in pancreatitis tissue was very low.Expression of uPA,uPAR mRNA and antigen was greatly increased in pancreatic cancer.The level of the uPA,uPAR expression was increased markedly in the group with metastasis compared with non-metastasis.Expression of uPA,uPAR was highly related to the degree of metastasis of pancreatic cancer. Conclusion The study suggests that uPA,uPAR play a role in the process of metastasis,being a good index for estimating prognosis in clinics.