Plasmionogen Activator Inhibitor-1 as a Potential Marker for the Malignancy of Digestive Tract Cancer

Takumi Sakakibara, Kenji Hibi, Masahiko Koike, Michitaka Fujiwara, Yasuhiro Kodera and Akimasa Nakao

Department of Surgery II, Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine

Introduction: PAI-1 has been shown to be a clinical marker of a poor prognosis in several human cancers, and it has also been shown to promote tumor growth and invasion during angiogenesis. Methods: To assess PAI-1 as a marker for the malignancy of digestive tract cancer, we performed quantitative RT-PCR for the PAI-1 gene and evaluated the relationship between the PAI-1 gene expression levels and clinicopathological findings in digestive tract cancer. Results: A significant increase in PAI-1 expression scores was observed in lymph-node-metastasis-positive digestive tract cancers compared to negative cancers as well as in distant-metastasis-positive digestive tract cancers compared to negative cancers. The PAI-1 expression score increased markedly with tumor stage, and multivariate analysis revealed the PAI-1 expression score to be a strong and independent prognostic factor for digestive tract cancer. Conclusion: These results suggested that PAI-1 may serve as a new parameter for the predicting the outcome of digestive tract cancer.

Key words
plasminogen activator inhibitor-1, digestive tract cancer, quantitative RT-PCR

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Takumi Sakakibara Department of Surgery II, Nagoya University Graduate School of Medicine
65 Tsurumai-machi, Showa-ku, Nagoya, 466-8560 JAPAN

Accepted
March 22, 2006

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