Mechanism of Metastasis and Tumor Invasion in Gastric Carcinoma

Ryuichi Denno, Koichi Hirata, Takahiro Yasoshima, Takayuki Shishido, Hideki Ura, Koji Yamaguchi, Toru Mizuguchi, Fumihiko Sato

First Department of Surgery, Sapporo Medical University School of Medicine

Surgery should be a curative and minimally invasive treatment for early gastric cancer. Therefore we need to know the biology of malignancy of gastric carcinoma. We established a new cell line, AZ-H5c, which has a high potential of metastasis to the nude mice liver, from the human gastric carcinoma line AZ521. Experimental studies revealed that, compared with AZ521 cells. AZ-H5c cells moved more actively, had stronger enzymatic activity of MMP-9, and expressed higher levels of integrin alpha 1, alpha 2, alpha 3, slpha 4, alpha 5, integrin beta 1 and CD44v3. Based on the above information, we investigated the clinico-pathologic characteristics of patients with carcinoma of the stomach. There were significant correlations of integrin alpha 2 and lymph node metastasis and integrin alpha 3 and liver metastasis. There was no correlation of clinico-pathologic characteristics and the expression of MMP-9, nor was the MMP-9 staining pattern related to survival. To foster the development of more effective, minimally invasive surgery, we should continue to accumulate data on gastric carcinma so as to improve diagnostic accuracy regarding lymph node metastasis, the pattern of recurrence and other factors.

Key words
gastric carcinoma, metastasis/invasion in gastric carcinoma, adhesion molecules in gastric carcinoma

Reprint requests
Ryuichi Denno First Department of Surgery, Sapporo Medical University School of Medicine
Minami 1 Jyo Nishi 16, Chuo-ku, Sapporo, 060-0061, JAPAN

Accepted
December 3, 1997

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