Thus, a better understanding the molecular mechanisms involved in the pathogenesis of LAD will be helpful for the development of better prognostic markers and novel therapeutic targets to improve clinical treatment of LAD patients. Recently, more and more studies gradually reveal that dysregulation of the Notch signaling pathway plays a pivotal role in the pathogenesis of many human malignancies. Notch-1, Caspase-dependent apoptosis one of the key receptor

in the Notch signaling pathway, encodes an important member of Notch family proteins [6]. Increasing evidences have shown that Notch-1 is involved in the regulation of tumor cell growth, proliferation, apoptosis, metastasis and chemo- or radioresistance. Notch-1 was either reported as an oncogene [7] in some solid tumors, or reported as a tumor suppressor in other tumors [8]. The two different viewpoints were usually resulted from different types of tumors or different

stages of tumors. For example, some scholars showed that Notch-1 could be activated to inhibit growth of small cell lung cancer cells, while it was also found to promote growth of NSCLC cells [9]. Depicted on the CT99021 International Multidisciplinary Classification of LAD by International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer/American Thoracic Society/European Respiratory Society (IASLC/ATS/ERS) published in 2011 [10], the standard of diagnosis is refining and adjusting to a comprehensive multidisciplinary classification. Thus, it is needed to detect the expression of Notch-1 protein and analyze its clincopathological PD0332991 or prognostic significance in different histological subtypes of human LADs. In the present study, Western blot assay was performed to detect the expression of Notch-1 protein in LAD cell lines and tissue samples. Also, immunohistochemistry

assay was performed to detect the expression of Notch-1 protein in 101 cases of LAD tissues with different histological subtypes. Then, the correlations of Notch-1 protein expression with clinicopathological factors of LAD patients were statistically CYTH4 analyzed. Additionally, the relationships of Notch-1 with histological subtypes and survival prognosis of LAD patients were investigated. Materials and methods Patients and tissue samples A total of 101 LAD tissues in Thoracic Surgery Department of Jinling Hospital from January 2005 to December 2007 were collected. All patients have signed the Informed Consent. Every patient’s basic clinical records were reviewed, including age, gender, operation time, surgical site and related pathological data. The morphological classification and metastasis judgment were determined by two senior pathologists. Cases were followed up by the form of telephone, patients’ overall survival (OS) time were defined from surgery to the date of death or the latest follow-up. The deadline of follow-up was September-15, 2012. This Research was granted scientific and ethic approval by The Ethics Committee of Jinling Hospital.