The expression of heparanase and vascular endothelial growth factor-C in gastric carcinoma and its implication

Objective To investigate the expression of heparanase and vascular endothelial growth factor-C (VEGF-C) protein in human gastric carcinoma, and to evaluate its clinical implications during the progress of gastric carcinoma. Methods The expression of heparanase and VEGF-C protein in 97 cases of gastric cancer, adjacent tissues and normal tissues in 20 subjects was determined by immuno- histochemistry. Results The positive rate of heparanase and VEGF-C protein in tumor tissues (61.9% and 66.0%) were significantly higher than those in adjacent tissues of cancer (7.2% and 5.0%) and normal tissues (8.3% and 5.0%, P0.01). Analysis of the clinicopathologic features showed that the stronger expression of heparanase in the cases of huge growing tumors, venous and lymphatic invasion, regional lymph node metastasis, serosal infiltration, distant metastases, and TNM stage Ⅲ-Ⅳ,but the expression of heparanase protein was not related with the histological types of the tumor (P 0.05) . The positive expression of VEGF-C protein in the tumor tissues was significantly related with serosal infiltration, lymphatic invasion, lymph node metastasis and TNM stage Ⅲ-Ⅳ (P0.01), however, it was not related with the size of tumor, histological type, venous invasion, and distant metastasis (P0.05). The 1, 3 and 5-year survival rates of patients with expression of heparanase or VEGF-C protein were significantly less than that of patients without expression of heparanase or VEGF-C (P0.05), respectively. In additional, the expression of heparanase protein had significantly positive correlation with the expression of VEGF-C protein in gastric carcinoma (P 0.01).Conclusions The expression of heparanase and/or VEGF-C protein was a poor prognostic determinant of gastric carcinoma after curative gastrectomy.