[Immunohistochemical analysis of the fibronectin expression and its prognostic value in patients with laryngeal cancer].

Fibronectin is one of the extracellular matrix glycoprotein, that plays an important role in cancer invasion and progression. Our purpose was to evaluate fibronectin expression and its possible prognostic value in laryngeal cancer. Forty-one patients (six female and thirty-five male) surgically treated for laryngeal cancer were included in the study. The expression and distribution of fibronectin was immunohistochemically determined by using monoclonal antibody against fibronectin. Low expression of fibronectin was detected around the individual carcinoma cells, but large amounts were present in the invasive tumour front and the cancer surrounding stroma was strongest positive for fibronectin. By univariate analysis the level of fibronectin expression on the border of the invasive tumour front was proved to be correlated with tumor stage (p = 0.03). There was a significant association between the defect of ECM and overall survival (p > 0.05). These observation indicates that testing the distribution and the expression of ECM seems to be useful to evaluate the histological grading of malignancy of laryngeal cancer and to be helpful to prognosticate the overall survival while measured on the border of tumour proliferative front in laryngeal patients. The results demonstrate that fibronectin amount may be useful in evaluating the invasion potential of the tumour.