DIFFERENTIAL EXPRESSION OF PLASMINOGEN ACTIVATOR SYSTEM IN TISSUES NEIGHBORING GASTROINTESTINAL CARCINOMAS

F. FUENTES; A.L. ORTALLI; A. SCICOLONE; J. LUJILDE; M. RAPACIOLI; L. VAUTHAY; V. SÁNCHEZ; G. SCICOLONE; V. FLORES

Ciudad de Mendoza, Provincia de Mendoza, Argentina

Congreso; XXI Reunión Científica Anual de la Sociedad de Biología de Cuyo; 2003

Sociedad de Biología de Cuyo

Plasminogen activators (PAs) end their inhibitors (PAIs) are involved in invasion and metastasis of tumor cells, participating in proteolysis of the extra cellular matrix (ECM) and regulation of cell adhesion. The purposes of this work were to study  the relationship between PA activity and invasion capability of gastrointestinal carcinomas (GC), and to assess whether PA in morphological normal tissue presents alterations related to the degree of local tumor invasiveness. So we assayed PA activity (uPA and tPA) and PAI-1 expression in samples from tumoral and morphologically normal tissues of gastrointestinal surgical samples obtained from patients bearing GC. We compared PA system parameters between tumoral and normal tissues and inside tumoral and normal tissues between patients with different degrees of invasion and dissemination. Results show that: 1) Tumoral  tissues present higher levels of PA (mainly uPA) activity and PAI expression than normal tissues. 2) total PA and tPA activity of normal tissues is higher in patients with local node invasion and stage IIIA and IIIB of tumor progression. These results show that morphologically normal tissue presents alterations in regulation of PA system related to the degree of tumoral node invasion. Tjis fact suggests that this behavior may be caused by tumor cells and could be useful for tumor invasion.