Decoy receptor 3 expression in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma: correlation with tumour invasion and metastasis

Abstract

Objective: Decoy receptor 3 (DcR3) is a soluble receptor, which can bind to and inactivate the apoptosis-inducing ligands. We studied a possible association between DcR3 expression and clinicopathologic features in patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC).

Methods: The mRNA expression of DcR3 was examined by RT-PCR in 109 primary ESCC patients. For the 52 pairs of DcR3 positive tissues, the protein expression was determined by immunohistochemistry.

Results: There was a strong correlation among DcR3 mRNA expression and tumor invasion (P = 0.01) and lymph node metastasis (P = 0.036). We also found that there was a correlation between DcR3 overexpression with lymph node metastasis (P = 0.014) in 52 pairs of DCR3 mRNA positive tissues.

Conclusions: Our finding suggested that the overexpression of DcR3 is significantly related with ESCC clinical staging. DcR3 might be a candidate as a tumor specific biomarker for ESCC.

Keywords::

• Decoy receptor 3 (DcR3)
• esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC)
• metastasis
• invasion

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to express our thanks to Dr Hui Lin for statistical review.

Declaration of interest

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 30872549) and Natural Science Foundation Project of CQ CSTC (No. 2009BA5013 and No. 2009BB5338). The authors report no conflict of interest. The authors alone are responsible for the content and writing of the paper.