Cell adhesion, important for maintaining tissue architecture, plays a role in numerous cancers and particularly in tumor progression. In the present study, we investigated perturbations in the expression of two important adhesion proteins, epithelial (E)-cadherin and CD44v6, in esophageal carcinoma (EC). EC specimens were obtained from 42 patients undergoing resection of EC; both cancer and adjacent normal tissue were collected. Expression of E-cadherin and CD44v6 was detected by immunohistochemistry and the correlation between the expression of these two proteins and their individual relationships with pathology were determined. E-cadherin expression in EC tissue was significantly less common than in adjacent normal tissue. Furthermore, absence of E-cadherin expression was correlated with infiltration depth, lymph node metastasis, distant metastases and TNM stage (P<0.05), but not with gender, age, differentiation or tumor size. By contrast, CD44v6 expression in EC was significantly higher than that in adjacent normal tissue and was correlated with differentiation, distant metastases and TNM stage (P<0.05), but not with other clinicopathological parameters. Additionally, we observed a negative correlation between E-cadherin and CD44v6 expression in EC (P<0.05). Based on their correlations with pathology, we suggest that the expression of E-cadherin and CD44v6 is important roles in promoting the infiltration and metastasis of EC.

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