Clinicopathological significances of PLOD2, epithelial-mesenchymal transition markers, and cancer stem cells in patients with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma

Abstract

Background: To examine the expression level of procollagen-lysine2-oxoglutarate 5-dioxygenase 2 (PLOD2) in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) and analyze its correlation with clinicopathological parameters, in order to explore the mechanism of PLOD2 in regulating invasion and metastasis of ESCC. Methods: Immunohistochemistry was used to detect the expression level of PLOD2 in tumor tissues and paired adjacent tissues of 172 patients with ESCC, and the relationship between PLOD2 expression and clinicopathological parameters was analyzed. The deposition of collagen fibers in tumor was detected by Sirius red staining. The correlation between tumor stem cells and epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) markers ZEB1 was analyzed by multivariate logistic regression. Results: The expression level of PLOD2 in tumor tissues of patients with ESCC (70.35%, 121/172) was significantly higher than that in paired adjacent tissues (29.65%, 51/172; P