Snail Protein Expression as a Hallmark of Gastric Carcinoma in Biopsy Samples

Abstract EN

Overexpression of the Snail gene transcriptional repressor promotes an epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) in epithelial tumor cell lines.

In this study, we aimed to determine the correlation between Snail protein expression and clinicopathological features and to test whether Snail can be used as a marker to distinguish gastric carcinomas from benign tissues in biopsy samples.

The results of immunohistochemistry with an antibody against Snail showed that most adenocarcinomas had positive Snail expression, whereas weak Snail expression was detected in a small number of gastritis and gastric adenomas.

Snail-positive cells were detected in the stroma as well as in the glandular epithelium in some adenocarcinomas.

In addition to Snail immunostaining, immunostaining of the EMT-related molecules, E-cadherin and vimentin, was performed.

E-cadherin was not detected in adenocarcinomas that expressed Snail, whereas gastritis and adenomas stained positively for E-cadherin.

Vimentin expression was seen in adenocarcinomas with positive Snail expression, whereas gastritis and adenomas did not express vimentin.

In conclusion, we propose that Snail is a useful biomarker to distinguish gastric adenocarcinomas from benign lesions in biopsy samples.