Expression of Snail in bladder urothelial carcinoma and its relationship with E-cadherin and a subset of T cell Groups

Abstract

Objective To investigate the expression of Snail in bladder urothelial carcinoma and evaluate its relationship with E-cadherin and a subset of T cell groups.Methods Immunohistochemical method was used to detect the expression of Snail and E-cadherin proteins in tissue from 156 cases of bladder urothelial carcinoma and 80 cases of the para-cancerous mucosa. The proteins expression status was analyzed with clinico-pathological data. Meanwhile, correlations with Snail and CD4+, CD8+, CD4+/CD8+ were analyzed.Results The positive rate of Snail in bladder urothelial carcinoma was 65.4％ , which was significantly higher than that in para-cancerous mucosa (48.8％). The expression of Snail was significantly correlated with the clinical stage, pathological grade, tumor quantity, distant metastasis and tumor recurrence.There was negative correlation between the expression of Snail and E-cadherin in bladder urothelial carcinoma. Positive expression of Snail had a negative correlation with the number of CD4+ and CD4+/CD8+ , whereas it had no significant correlation with the number of CD8+.Conclusions By inhibition of the E-cadherin expression and inducing local immunosuppression, Snail might play an important role in the process of the invasion and metastasis of bladder urothelial carcinoma. Key words: Snail protein; E-cadherin protein; Bladder urothelial carcinoma; Subset of Tcell; Immunohistochemistry