Objective: To explore the relationship between heparanase mRNA expression and clinicopathological parameters in human gastric cancer.
Methods: RT-PCR was used to detect the expression of heparanase mRNA in 43 human gastric carcinomas and 10 adjacent normal gastric tissues.
Results: Heparanase mRNA was expressed in 29 of the 43 cases of gastric cancer with a positive rate of 67.4%, which was significantly higher than that in adjacent normal gastric tissues (P = 0.013). The expression level was higher in late-stage tumors (stage III and IV) than in early-stage tumors (stage I and II) (P = 0.001), in tumors with invasion to serosa than those without serosal invasion (P = 0.009), in tumors with lymph node metastasis than those without lymph node metastasis (P = 0.018), and in large-sized tumors than in small-sized ones (P = 0.009). The expression was not correlated with patients' age, sex, tumor location, histologic types, differentiation, peritoneal dissemination and liver metastasis (P > 0.05).
Conclusion: Heparanase might play an important role in the development of invasion and metastasis of gastric cancer.