Clinical significance of Leptin receptor (LEPR) and Endoglin (CD105) expressions in colorectal adenocarcinoma.

PURPOSE: Carcinoma of the colon occurs quite more often in obese than in healthy people. The key molecule in the development of obesity is leptin, a product of Ob gene that expresses its effects through a specific receptor (LEPR), so our goal was to investigate the expression of LEPR in colorectal carcinoma and the association of their expression with neoangiogenesis, with local/regional and distant metastases and with tumor stage according to the Astler-Coller classification. METHODS: In the paraffin blocks taken from 75 patients treated for colorectal cancer, 3-4 μm thick cuts were made using routine hematoxylin-eosin (HE) and immunohistochemical ABC methods with anti-LEPR and anti-CD105 antibodies. After quantitative analysis of LEPR expression, the microvascular density per mm2 was calculated stereometrically. For the statistical processing, the SPSS software (version 13.0) was used. RESULTS: Pronounced expression of LEPR in stages B1 and B2 was present in 9.1% and in 16% of the cases. In the C2 and D stages, pronounced LEPR expression was found in 51.6%, i.e. 57.1% of the cases, which was significantly higher than in the stages B1 and B2. In the C2 and D stages, a high neoangiogenesis index was found in a significantly higher number of cases (67.7% and 100%) than in stages B1 and B2. LEPR expression had a highly significant correlation coefficient associated with tumor stage, neoangiogenesis index, metastases in the lymph nodes and with distant metastases. CONCLUSION: The increase of LEPR expression was accompanied by increased neoangiogenesis and an increase in the metastatic potential of colorectal cancer.