Abnormal β-catenin gene expression with invasiveness of primary hepatocellular carcinoma in China

Figure 1 Immunohistochemistry of β-catenin. A: In normal liver tissue, the staining was mainly positive on the cellular membrane (arrowpoint), with very weak cytoplasmic staining. × 200 B: Para-cancerous cirrhotic liver tissue showed membrane staining (arrowpoint) like normal liver tissue. C,D: For HCC, cytoplasmic and nuclear staining was dominant (arrowpoints), whereas membrane staining was rare. × 200

Figure 2 Labeling index (LI) of β-catenin. Recurrent patient (n = 15) was much higher than that of non-recurrent patient (n = 19) (84.9 ± 17.4) vs (39.1 ± 14.3).

Figure 3 β-catenin mRNA expression index (EI). HCC was higher vs para-cancerous tissue (P < 0.05). P: para-cancerous tissue; T: HCC; M: nucleic acid molecular mass marker.

Figure 4 In situ hybridization of β-catenin gene mRNA. Stronger in HCC (A) vs para-cancerous cirrhotic liver tissue and (B) normal liver tissue (C).