Expression of Twist in pancreatic carcinoma and its role in epithelial mesenchymal transition

Objective To investigate the relationship of Twist induced epithelial mesenchymal transitions (EMT) during pancreatic carcinoma progression.Methods The expressions of Twist,N-cadherin and Vimentin proteins were tested by immunohistochemistry in 42 cases of pancreatic carcinomas and 26 cases of adjacent paracancerous tissues.Results The positive rates of Twist,N-cadherin and Vimentin in 42 cases of pancreatic carcinomas were 76.2％,59.5％ and 57.1％,respectively.The positive rate of Twist,N-cadherin and Vimentin were all significant between pancreatic carcinomas and paired tumor-adjacent paracancerous tissues (all P ＜0.001).The differences of the expression of Twist,N-cadherin and Vimentin in pancreatic carcinoma of tumor differentiation,TNM stage,neural invasion and lymph node metastasis were significant (all P ＜ 0.05).Significantly positive correlation was found between the expression of Twist and the others (N-cadherin and Vimentin) by using spearman correlation analysis (r =0.506,P =0.001 ; r =0.417,P =0.006).Significantly positive correlation was found between the expression of N-cadherin and Vimentin by using spearman correlation analysis(r =0.462,P =0.002).Conclusions Twist signaling pathway activation might mediate pancreatic epithelial cells to EMT and then promote pancreatic carcinoma invasion and metastasis. Key words: Pancreatic neoplasms;  Twist transcription factor;  N-cadherin;  Vimentin;  Epithelial mesenchymal transition ;  Immunohistochemistry