The role of the cell-cell adhesion molecule E-cadherin in large bowel tumour cell invasion and metastasis.

It has been suggested that the selective loss of E-cadherin expression can generate invasiveness in human carcinoma cells and might be a predictor of metastasis. Frozen sections of samples from 44 patients, 43 with suspected large bowel cancer and one with a liver recurrence were examined for E-cadherin expression using the antibody 6F9 specific for the human E-cadherin molecule. Twelve of the 40 patients with carcinoma already had lymph node involvement at the time of surgery. Samples from the primary carcinomas of only nine of these 12 patients showed reduced E-cadherin expression. However, the one lymph node with metastatic spread examined did show reduced E-cadherin expression. Four of the 40 carcinoma patients had liver involvement at the time of surgery. The primary carcinoma samples from only three of these four patients showed reduced E-cadherin expression. In addition only two out of the three liver metastases examined showed reduced expression. The primary carcinoma samples from seven patients with no evidence of tumour spread also exhibited reduced expression. Overall, analysis of the data suggests that there is no absolute correlation between reduced E-cadherin expression and tumour spread in carcinomas of the large bowel.