CD44 exon v6 correlates with cellular differentiation but not with progression and metastasis of cervical cancer

The purpose of this study was to investigate whether CD44v6 expression correlates with progression or metastasis of cervical cancer. The presence of mRNA for DD44v6 was examined, the association with clinicopathological features was assessed in 80 patients with cervical cancer by reverse transcriptase-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) and subsequent Southern blot hybridisation with an oligonucleotide probe specific for v6. The standard form of CD44 was expressed in all specimens and 53 of 80 cervical cancers expressed an isoform containing exon v6 in combination with other variant exons. In addition, longer size transcripts of more than 1350bp (long form) were identified in 22 of the 53 CD44v6 positive patients. The expression of CD44v6 and CD44v6 long form in squamous cell carcinomas was significantly higher than that in non-squamous cell carcinomas (P<0.001). The expression of CD44v6 long form in histological grade 1 and 2 was significantly higher than that in grade 3 (P<0.05). 47 patients in stage Ib-IIb cervical cancers were treated by radical hysterectomy and pelvic lymphadenectomy. We did not find any association between the expression of the long form or the short form of CD44v6 and any pathological features, except for histological cell type. These findings suggest that the regulation of CD44v6 seems to be different between different histological cell types and different tumour grades, and the expression of CD44v6 might not be implicated in the progression and metastasis of cervical cancer.