Plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 as a potential marker for the malignancy of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma.

PURPOSE AND EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN To test whether plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1) can serve as a candidate marker for the malignancy of esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (SCC), we performed a quantitative reverse transcription-PCR for PAI-1 gene and evaluated the possible relationship between PAI-1 gene expression levels and clinicopathological findings in esophageal SCC. RESULTS Significant increases in PAI-1 scores were observed in metastasis-positive esophageal SCCs (3.08 +/- 0.80) compared with metastasis-negative ones (-0.31 +/- 0.62; P = 0.0042). PAI-1 expression scores significantly increased with tumor stage (P = 0.05, ANOVA). CONCLUSIONS These results suggested that PAI-1 might serve as a new parameter for prediction of prognosis in esophageal SCC.