Pancreatic cancer is one of the most malignant tumors in the digestive tract, with difficulty in early diagnosis, poor prognosis, and high likelihood of metastasis and recurrence. In recent years, with the development of molecular biology technology, blocking or delaying the progression of the cell cycle to inhibit the malignant proliferation of tumor cells may bring new hope for the treatment of pancreatic cancer patients. The TFPI-2 gene located on human chromosome 7q22 expresses a broad-spectrum serine protease inhibitor, also known as placenta protein 5, which is widely distributed in normal human tissues such as kidney, heart, skeletal muscle, and prostate.
In vitro, it strongly inhibits the activity of various proteases including plasmin, trypsin, matrix metalloproteinase-1 and -3, maintaining the structural integrity of the extracellular matrix and regulating the invasion and metastasis of tumor cells. Through research on various tumors such as malignant meningioma, laryngeal squamous cell carcinoma, and lung cancer, it has been found that the expression of TFPI-2 is reduced to varying degrees in these tumors, and its expression level is related to the tumor's ability to invade and metastasize as well as its malignancy. The stronger the invasive and metastatic ability and the higher the malignancy, the less the expression of TFPI-2; conversely, the more the expression. Restoring the expression of TFPI-2 can suppress the growth and infiltration and metastasis of tumors.
We used immunohistochemical methods to study the expression of TFPI-2 in pancreatic cancer and compared it with Sato's...