Author's response to reviews Title: Association of NGAL mRNA Expression with Tumor Progression and MMP-9 in Human Rectal Cancer Authors:

Clinicopathologic and prognostic significance of MMP-7 (matrilysin) expression in human rectal cancer.

OBJECTIVE There is increasing evidence to indicate that MMP-7 plays a more important role in tumor progression than other MMPs. The aim of this study was to detect MMP-7 expression in human rectal cancer and normal rectal tissue and to determine whether it is correlated with invasion and metastasis of human rectal cancer. METHODS Eighty-six paired samples of rectal cancer and distant normal r...

Author's response to reviews Title: NGAL as a possible biomarker for sepsis-induced kidney failure: evaluating changes in NGAL expression in a rat model of acute kidney injury Authors:

The matrix metalloproteinase-9/neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin complex plays a role in breast tumor growth and is present in the urine of breast cancer patients.

PURPOSE Having previously shown that the binding of neutrophil gelatinase-associated lipocalin (NGAL) to matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9) protects this extracellular matrix remodeling enzyme from autodegradation, we hypothesized that the addition of NGAL to breast cancer cells, which do not express this protein but do express MMP-9, might result in a more aggressive phenotype in vivo. Based o...

Author's response to reviews Title: Expression of endosialin is associated with the progression and with the more aggressive biological characters of rectal cancers with a clinical trial of preoperative radiotherapy Authors:

The Role of Matrix Metalloproteinase-3 Functional 5A/6A Promoter Polymorphism in Tumor Cell Progression and Metastasis of Breast Cancer

In the human genome, chromosome 11 contains a cluster of matrix metalloproteinase (MMP) genes. Single nucleotide polymorphisms in the promoter region of MMP genes are important for MMP expression. A common adenine deletion polymorphism (5A) at position -1171 of the MMP-3 gene promoter (5´-AAAAAACCAT-3´ change to 5´-AAAAACCAT-3´) facilitates transcriptional factor binding and MMP-3 promoter acti...