Expression of sialyl Lewisa relates to poor prognosis in cholangiocarcinoma

Figure 1 Immunohistochemical detection of sLe^a in CCA. A: A CCA case with no sLe^a expression in tumor but with positive staining in the normal bile ducts (arrows); B: and C: CCA cases with positive sLe^a, showing apical and stromal staining, respectively; D: Vascular metastasis of sLe^a positive CCA cells. (Immunoperoxidase staining, original magnification ×100).

Figure 2 Correlation between expression and cumulative survival rate (Kaplan-Meier method). Patients who were positive for tumor sLe^a had a less favorable prognosis compared to those who were negative (P<0.001).

Figure 3 Adhesion of CCA cells to epithelial cells of the human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVEC). KKU-M213 or KKU-100 cells were incubated with non-activated or IL-1β activated HUVECs for 45 min at 37 °C. The basal adhesion levels of KKU-100 and KKU-M213 to non-activated HUVECs were not statistically different, whereas the adhesion levels to activated HUVECs were significantly different (P<0.001). A significant difference occurred between the levels of KKU-100 and KKU-M213 adhesion to non-activated and IL-1β-activated HUVECs (P<0.001). The adhesion level of KKU-M213 significantly declined (P<0.001), when anti-sLe^a or anti E-selectin was added to KKU-M213 or IL-1β-activated HUVECs before the adhesion assay. The results were expressed as mean±SD of triplicate samples of a representative experiment.

Figure 4 Contributions of sLe^a and E-selectin to transmigration of KKU-M213 to activated HUVECs. Transmigration of KKU-M213 was significantly reduced (P<0.001) when either sLe^a or E-selectin was blocked with specific corresponding antibodies before the transmigration assay. Experiments were carried out in triplicate. The mean±SD of a representative experiment and similar patterns was obtained in the two repeated experiments.