The role of adhesion molecules in hepatocellulary carcinoma.

e15144 Background: Hepatocellulary carcinoma (HCC) consists of 85-90 % of liver tumors.. Several molecular markers are developed for early diagnosis. Adhesion molecules like VCAM and EPCAM are in these group. Adhesion molecules take part in regulation of different functions such as tropism of cells to spesific tissues, identify each other, embryogenesis, cell growth and differentiation and inflammation. Vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 (VCAM-1) interferes with integrins in VLA group, found in leucocytes. These molecules are expressed in endothelial cells, antigen presenting cells, bone marrow stromal cells, embrionic and synovial tissue. Epithelial cell adhesion molecule (EpCAM) is a 40 kDa weisght cell surface antigen. As expression of EpCAM is increased in tumour cells it is ssuggested that this molecule can be predictive marker for malignancy. Methods: This study was conducted to determine serum levels of VCAM and EPCAM which may have diagnostic or prognostic value in blood samples of patients with HCC.Sixty newly diagnosed HCC patients and 20 healthy subjects admitted to Istanbul University Institute of Oncology and department of gastroenterohepatology were included in the study. Serum levels of VCAM and EPCAM were analysed in duplicated manner by ELISa assay. SPSS 16 sofware programme was used for stastical analyses. Results: There was a stastically significant difference between patient and control groups in respect to VCAM and EPCAM levels (p < 0.001) Conclusions: Our results suggested that adhesion molecules may be useful in early diagnosis of HCC. When one year survival data were evaluated it seems that VCAM and EPCAM have no prognostic value.