Objective   To investigate the expression and significance of cyclin D and cycline E in female non-small lung cancer patients.

  Methods   Western blot was used to detect the expression of cyclin D1 and cyclin E in 66 female non-small lung cancer and normal tissue.

  Results   Thirty cases of female non-small lung cancer(30/66;45.5%)showed the overexpression of cyclin D1, and thirty-nine cases(39/66;59.1%)were positive for cyclin E.Expression levels of cyclin E and cyclin D1 were significantly higher in the tumor samples than in normal controls.Cyclin D1 expression levels were higher in poorly differentiated NSCLCs and in patients with tumor size more than 3 cm.No significant relationships between cyclin E expression and tumor differentiation or tumor size were observed.High-level cyclin D1 and cyclin E expression were more frequently found in patients with lymph node metastasis, but were not associated with histological type or tumor stage.The expression of cyclin E in the cyclin D1 positive group was significantly higher than that of the cyclin D1 negative grioup, and the lymph node metastasis rate in the coexpression group of cyclin D1 and cyclin E were significantly higher than that of the non-coexpression group.

  Conclusion   The observations indicated that cyclin D1 and cyclin E protein overexpression might be implicated in the oncogenesis of lung cancer, and could be predictive molecular markers for poor prognosis in resectable lung cancer patients which might help us to choose proper therapeutic modalities after resection of the tumor.