BACKGROUNDHepatoma-derived growth factor (HDGF), a novel growth factor, has a widely expression in many normal cells and tumor cells. It plays an important role in cell proliferation, differentiation and angiogenesis. It is considered as a promising marker for predicting the invasion, matastasis and prognosis of carcinomas in clinical researches. The aim of this study is to evaluate the expression of HDGF and its clinical implication in patients who undergone complete resection for stage I non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC).

METHODSImmunohistochemical technology was applied to detect the expression of HDGF in 118 lung cancer tissues and 30 normal lung tissues as control.

RESULTSHDGF staining was observed in nuclear as well as in cytoplasm. HDGF positively staining was seen in all patients, and remarkably higher than that in normal lung tissues (52.23±10.35 vs 156.73±70.95, P < 0.01). Expresson of HDGF was closely related to histological classification, but not to other clinicopathological factors, and the expression of HDGF in adenocarcinoma was much stronger than that in squamous cancers (P=0.001). Univariate analysis and multivariate Cox regression analysis showed that the patients with high HDGF expression had a shorter overall survival and HDGF was a significantly independent predictive factor for patients with stage I NSCLC (RR=1.011, P=0.002).

CONCLUSIONSHDGF may be a promising predictive factor for stage I NSCLC, and the assessment of HDGF may provide new insight on carcinogenesis and development of stage I NSCLC .