Author(s)

Juan R de la Haba Rodríguez, Ignacio Porras Quintela, Gema Pulido Cortijo, Concepción Lucena Martínez, Javier García Corbacho, Enrique Aranda Aguilar

1Medical Oncology and Pathology Departments, Reina Sofía University Hospital, Córdoba, Spain.
Department of Cell Biology, Physiology and Immunology, University of Cordoba, Córdoba, Spain.
Department of Cell Biology, Physiology and Immunology, University of Cordoba, Córdoba, Spain..
Medical Oncology and Pathology Departments, Reina Sofía University Hospital, Córdoba, Spain.

PECAM-1 is an adhesion molecule that plays an important role in the process of tumour disease dissemination since a function in transendothelial migration, angiogenesis and immune response has been shown for this membrane protein. Nevertheless the expression of PECAM-1 protein in solid tumours is a controversial matter and it has not been clarified so far. Thus, the aim of our study was to investigate PECAM-1 expression by immunohistochemistry in primary carci-nomas from colon, breast, bladder, ovary and kidney, and in their metastases. In addition an example of primary and metastatic melanoma was also investigated. We found that PECAM-1 is expressed in the metastases of all primary car-cinomas that express PECAM-1 (colorectal, breast and urothelial bladder). By the contrary metastases from primary carcinomas non-expressing PECAM-1 are also negative for expression. In conclusion, our findings support a possible role of this molecule in metastatic development of a subset of malignant human epithelial tumours.t

PECAM-1, CD31, Angiogenesis, Neoplasms, Immunohistochemistry

J. Rodríguez, I. Quintela, G. Cortijo, C. Martínez, J. Corbacho and E. Aguilar, "Platelet Endothelial Cell Adhesion Molecule (PECAM-1) Expression in Malignant Human Tumours and their Metastases," Journal of Cancer Therapy, Vol. 1 No. 2, 2010, pp. 66-70. doi: 10.4236/jct.2010.12011.