Topic: E-cadherin

E-cadherin

posted Sat, 02 Jul 2005 04:12PM
chrissy1

Has anyone heard of the term E-cadherin positive. I have tried all the web sites but dont understand them??? Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

Chris x

Chrissy

posted Sat, 02 Jul 2005 04:35PM
Daphne

I hadn't heard of it before. How did you find out about it? Was it on a pathology report? The most intelligible description of it I've found on the internet is this and it's not particularly easy to understand:

"E-cadherin is a transmembrane glycoprotein that mediates epithelial cell-to-cell adhesion. The loss of E-cadherin can result in the disruption of cell clusters. It is therefore, postulated that E-cadherin may function as a tumor suppressor protein. The loss of E-cadherin has been associtated with metastatis and poor prognosis in invasive breast cancer and can help differentiate between ductal and lobular neoplasms of the breast. It has also been shown to be an independent predictor in the disease progression in bladder cancer."

I also found this statement:

"Loss of E-cadherin-mediated-adhesion characterises the transition from benign lesions to invasive, metastatic cancer"

I'm not a microbiologist but I think what it means is that it's a protein that helps cells stick together and if the cells don't stick together properly it can cause a benign breast lesion to become malignant and I suppose if you have a cluster of malignant cells that don't stick together properly there's a tendency for them to split off and form metastatic cancer. This doesn't really explain why benign cells that don't stick together properly become malignant. I think the reference to "disruption to cell clusters" referred to above may mean that poor adhesion causes them to behave and reproduce abnormally, hence the malignancy. Anyway, that's how I interpret what I've read.

Daphne, you are correct

posted Sat, 02 Jul 2005 06:19PM
Holeybones

Extract from

"Expression of E-cadherin cell adhesion molecules in human breast cancer tissues and its relationship to metastasis"

Authors: Oka, H Shiozaki, K Kobayashi, M Inoue, H Tahara, T Kobayashi, Y Takatsuka, N Matsuyoshi, S Hirano and M Takeichi

"These results suggest that the reduction of E-cad expression may play an important role in invasion and metastasis of human breast cancer. "

http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/53/7/1696

e-caderin

posted Mon, 04 Jul 2005 05:45PM
chrissy1

Thanks girls.

I just questioned this because my report said my tumour was E-Caderin positive.

I will investigate more.

Chris xx