The Expression of Neural Cell Adhesion Molecule in Advanced Rectal Cancer

The expression of neural cell adhesion molecule (NCAM) was studied immunohistochemicaly in 164 cases of advanced rectal cancer (StageII and StageIII). Fourteen cases (8.5%) were positive for NCAM, and NCAM positive cases had a high incidence of perineural invasion of cancer and poor prognosis compared with NCAM negative cases. These results suggest that NCAM plays an important role in perinural invasion of tumor and survival rates for rectal cancer.