Methods: The aims of this study are to investigate the effects of ET-1 in the angiogenesis of oral SCC by immunostaing technique. Both positive ET-1 and VEGF staining was mainly localized to the cytoplasm or the membrane of the malignant cells. OSCC cell lines, including OECM-1, OC-2, KOSC-3, HSC-3, SCC-9, SCC-15, SCC-25, CAL-27, and SAS were testified for the expression of ET-1 and VEGF with real-time PCR.
Results: Our IHC results revealed that the expression of ET-1 and VEGF was detected in 42 (59.2%) and 37 (52.1%) tumors respectively. In the survival analysis, we found patients with high VEGF expression had significant lower survival rates (p=0.46) while the expression ET-1 had no significant correlation (p=0.849). Further investigation reveals a significant correlation between the expression of ET-1 and VEGF in the oral cancer cell line studies.
Conclusions: This result implied the significant correlation between the expression of ET-1 and VEGF in OSCC cell lines, too. The results depict that ET-1 plays an important role on VEGF in oral cancer tumorigenesis.