The Expression and Clinical Significance of phospho-AKT,AKT2 and PTEN Proteins in Human Non-small Cell Lung Cancer

Objective To investigate the expression, clinical significance and relationship of phospho-AKT (p-AKT), AKT2 and PTEN in human non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) tissue.Methods The expression of p-AKT ,AKT2 and PTEN in 80 cases of NSCLC and 35 cases of no-cancerous lung disease were assessed by immunohistochemistry, and their correlations with clinicopathologic factors were statistically analyzed.Results The positive rate of p-AKT, AKT2 was 78.8%、91.3% in NSCLC and 0%、5.7% (P0.05) in no-cancerous lung disease. But the positive rate of PTEN (47.5%) was significantly lower than that of PTEN (94.3%) in no-cancerous lung disease (P0.05). The expression of p-AKT didn’t relate to age, sex, histological subtype and tumor differentiation, lymph node metastasis and TNM stages(P0.05). The positive rate of AKT2 in the group with lymph node metastasis (100.0%) was significantly higher than that of AKT2 in the group without lymph node metastasis(80.6%)(P0.05). The expression of PTEN correlated with lymph node metastasis and differentiation of NSCLC (P0.05). In addition, Positive correlations were observed between the expression of AKT2 and p-AKT in NSCLC tissues(P0.05). The expression of PTEN had negative correlations with the expression of p-AKT and AKT2 (P0.05).Conclusion AKT activation may be present in NSCLC. The loss of expression of PTEN may correlate to activation of AKT. AKT2 may be one of regulated forms of PTEN.