Comprehensive Analysis of Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor-C Related Factors in Stomach Cancer

Background: Vascular endothelial growth factor-C (VEGF-C), which contributes to lymphatic metastasis (LM)in malignant disease, is one of the most important factors involved in physical and pathological lymphangiogenesis.Some VEGF-C related factors such as sine oculis homeobox homolog (SIX) 1, contactin (CNTN) 1 and dualspecificity phosphatase (DUSP) 6 have been extensively studied in malignancies, but their expression levels andassociations have still to be elucidated in stomach cancer.
Methods: We detected their expression levels in 30paired stomach cancer tissues using quantitative real-time reverse transcription-PCR (qRT-PCR). The expressionand clinical significance of each factor was analyzed using Wilcoxon signed rank sum test. The correlationamong all the factors was performed by Spearman rank correlation analysis.
Results: The results suggest thatVEGF-C and CNTN1 are significantly correlated with tumor size, SIX1 with the age and CNTN1 also with thecTNM stage. There are significant correlations of expression levels among VEGF-C, SIX1, CNTN1 and DUSP6.
Conclusions: There exists an important regulatory crosstalk involving SIX1, VEGF-C, CNTN1 and DUSP6 instomach cancer.