• P A Singleton, T Mirzapoiazova, R Hasina, R Salgia, and J Moss.
• Department of Medicine, Section of Pulmonary and Critical Care, Department of Anesthesia and Critical Care and psinglet@medicine.bsd.uchicago.edu.
• Br J Anaesth. 2014 Jul 1;113 Suppl 1:i103-8.

BackgroundWe and others have previously demonstrated that the μ-opioid receptor (MOR) is overexpressed in several human malignancies. There is a seven-fold increase in MOR in cell lines of human lung cancer. In animal models, overexpression of MOR promotes tumour growth and metastasis. We, therefore, examined whether MOR expression is increased in metastatic lung cancer.MethodsIn this study, we examined the association between MOR expression and metastasis in archived biopsy samples from patients with lung cancer. Paraffin-embedded patient material was stained using MOR antibody and scored qualitatively by two independent pathologists using a four-point scale.ResultsIn human lung cancer and normal adjacent lung samples obtained from 34 lung cancer patients, MOR expression was increased significantly in cancer samples from patients with lung cancer compared with adjacent control tissue (P=0.0242). When the samples from patients with metastatic lung cancer were separated from the cohort of the total number of patients with lung cancer, we observed an approximately two-fold increase in MOR expression (P=0.0013).ConclusionsThe association between the expression of MOR and the progression of the tumour is consistent with the hypothesis of a direct effect of MOR on cancer progression.© The Author [2014]. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the British Journal of Anaesthesia. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

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