A. Mialhe et al., EXPRESSION OF 3 CELL-ADHESION MOLECULES IN BLADDER CARCINOMAS - CORRELATION WITH PATHOLOGICAL FEATURES, Analytical cellular pathology, 13(3), 1997, pp. 125-136
Recently, independent studies have shown that the expression of two in
tegrin chains, beta 4 and alpha 2, plus the epithelial cadherin are re
lated to tumour progression in human bladder carcinomas. For the first
time, we compare the expression of these three cell adhesion molecule
s using immunohistochemical analysis of consecutive cryosections from
a series of 50 bladder tumours. E-cadherin, beta 4, and alpha 2 were s
trongly expressed in normal urothelium. A majority of non-invasive bla
dder cancers stained positively for E-cadherin (62%), whereas only 29%
expressed normal positivity for alpha 2, and only 35% for beta 4. How
ever, most invasive tumours presented an aberrant expression of alpha
2 (81%), beta 4 (100%), and E-cadherin (75%). We studied the correlati
on of immunoreactivity with histological grade and stage. The alpha 2
pattern was not correlated with stage and grade. In contrast, loss of
normal beta 4 expression was significantly related to increasing tumou
r grade and deep invasion with a higher correlation for grade. Finally
, E-cadherin expression was highly correlated with stage, but not with
grade. Thus our results indicate that, although many invasive bladder
rumours presented a disorder in expression of the two integrins alpha
2 and beta 4, E-cadherin appeared to be a better marker of invasivene
ss in bladder carcinomas.