The relationship between E-cadherin and b-catenin expressions with histopathologic grading of squamous cell carcinoma

Statement of Problem: E-cadherin is an inetrcellular adhesion molecule playing the important role in cell to cell adhesion in the epithelium. β-catenin is a cytoplasmic protein that directly binds to E-cadherin to connect it to the cytoskeleton. The first step in invasion of cancerous cells to adjacent tissues or metastasis is reduction of adhesion between tumoral cells. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to determine therelationship between different grades of scc with expression rate of E-cadherin and b-catenin and also to identify the correlation of expression of these markers with each other.Materials and Method: The sections of 60 formalin-fixed, paraffin-embedded biopsy specimens including 20 well differentiated, 20 moderately differentiated and 20 poorly differentiated squamous cell carcinoma were immunostained to determine the expressions of E-cadherin and b-catenin. Mann-whitney, Kruskal-Wallis and Wilcoxon tests were used to analyze the data.Result: The difference of the expression of E-cadherin and b-catenin was statistically significant in different grades of scc ( p < 0.001). But comparison of the expression of these markers in any histological grade separately did not show a significant difference ( p >0.05). Although regardless of differential grade of the tumor, expression of b-catenin was significantly entirely different from E-cadherin overally ( p =0.015). Conclusion: These findings suggested that expression of E-cadherin and b-catenin reduced in proportion to reduction of differential grade of scc and also reduction of the expression of E-cadherin and b-catenin was proportional to each other, although regardless of the degree of differentiation, expression of b-catenin was totally less than that of E-cadherin.