Figures & data
Figure 1 Representative immunohistochemical images of three epithelial-mesenchymal transition markers in intrahepatic cholangiocarcinoma. (A) E-cadherin was strongly expressed in the plasma membrane of the tumor cells; (B) demonstration of loss of membranous E-cadherin in tumor cells; (C) negative N-cadherin expression with a positivity less than 10%; (D) demonstration of N-cadherin in the membrane and cytoplasm of tumor cells; (E) negative expression of vimentin in cancer cells while stromal cells were positively stained; and (F) acquired vimentin expression in cancer cells.
Table 1 Correlations between epithelial-mesenchymal transition markers and clinicopathological characteristics
Figure 2 Survival analysis of three epithelial-mesenchymal transition markers in univariate analysis using the Kaplan-Meier method determined by the log-rank test. E-cadherin loss (A) and upregulation of mesenchymal proteins vimentin (B) and N-cadherin (C) were found to be significantly associated with a poor outcome. There was also a trend toward coexistence of multiple epithelial-mesenchymal transition markers (D and E) associated with much more shorter overall survival.
Table 2 Multivariate analysis of predictive factors for overall survival