Objective To investigate the influence of β-catenin gene deletion on Stat-5α phosphorylation in bcr-abl induced leukemia cells. Methods The established conditonal hematopoitic β-catenin knockout mice were used to isolate bone marrow cells. Exogenous bcr-abl fusion gene was transduced to these bone marrow cells by retroviral infection with intent to transfom them to leukemia cells.Immunofluorescence was performed to detect the phosphorylation status of Stat-5α in both β-catenin deletion cells and control cells. bcr-abl transcription and protein levels were evaluated with real-time PCR and western blotting. Results Phosphorylation of Stat-5α was reduced significantly in β-catenin deletion leukemia cells on comparison with control cells despite that total Stat-5α protein showed no obvious changes. Total tyrosine phosphorylation and bcr-abl protein expression were reduced in bcr-abl induced β-catenin deletion CML cells,on the contrary, both of the reduction were not seen in bcr-abl induced β-catenin deletion ALL cells.Conclusion Loss of β-catenin inhibits both Stat-5α phosphorylationin and bcr-abl expression in bcr-abl induced leukemia cells.

BACKGROUNDTo study the expression of MMP-2, MMP-9, TIMP-1 proteins and mRNA in NSCLC and to analyse their relations with prognosis.

METHODSImmunohistochemistry (IHC) and in situ hybridization (ISH) were used to detect the expression of MMP-2, MMP-9, TIMP-1 proteins and mRNA in pa-raffin-embedded NSCLC specimens.

RESULTSThere were no significant differences among the MMP-2, MMP-9, TIMP-1 expression and age, sex, histological type and differentiation. There was statistical relationship between expression of MMP-2, MMP-9, TIMP-1 and lymph node metastasis. Multivariate Cox model analysis suggested that the survival time was significantly related to lymph node metastasis, expression of MMP-2 and MMP-9. The results of IHC and ISH suggested that the concordant rates of MMP-2, MMP-9, TIMP-1 proteins and mRNA were of statistical significance (P < 0.01,P < 0.005,P < 0.025).

CONCLUSIONSMMP-2 and MMP-9 are independent factors that affect prognosis, TIMP-1 is an useful parameter to the prognosis of NSCLC.

Objective To investigate the value of multiparametric CT features for predicting the risk classification of gastric stro-mal tumor(GST).Methods The clinical data from 139 patients with GST were retrospectively collected.According to the patho-logical risk results,the patients were divided into two groups:a low-risk GST group(including very low-and low-risk)with 75 patients and a high-risk GST group(including medium and high-risk)with 64 patients.The CT features between low-risk GST group and high-risk GST group were compared using chi-squared test or t-test.The risk factors of high-risk GST were identified by univariate analysis.The prediction models were built by multivariate logistic regression.The performance of models were evaluated by receiver oper-ating characteristic(ROC)curve.Results There were significant differences in the maximum tumor diameter,minimum tumor diameter,arterial phase enhancement degree,venous phase enhancement rate,arterial phase enhancement degree rate,venous phase enhance-ment degree rate,cystic,and necrosis between low-risk GST group and high-risk GST group,which were associated with the risk classification of GST.The area under the curve(AUC)of the quantitative features-based model that combined maximum tumor diam-eter,minimum tumor diameter,arterial phase enhancement degree,venous phase enhancement rate,arterial phase enhancement degree rate and venous phase enhancement degree rate,showed a significantly higher performance than the qualitative features-based model that incorporated cystic and necrosis(0.981 vs 0.850,P<0.001).Conclusion Maximum tumor diameter,minimum tumor diameter,arterial phase enhancement degree,venous phase enhancement rate,arterial phase enhancement degree rate,venous phase enhance-ment degree rate,as well as cystic and necrosis,are associated with the risk classification of GST and can predict the high-risk GST.