Table 2. Studies where Wnt-5a has a tumour-promoting effect.

Tissue type (n)	Detected by	Expression in tumour compared with normal	Disease outcome	References
Melanoma Primary tumours and matched metastases (59)	IH	Increased expression as disease progressed (P=0.013)	Multivariate analysis showed Wnt-5a expression was an independent risk factor for reduced metastasis-free and overall survival	Da Forno et al (2008)
Breast cancer cell lines normal tissue (10) Metastatic tissue (9) Normal breast cancer cell lines (11)	mRNA levels	Over expression of Wnt-5A in metastasis-derived breast cancer cells in comparison with normal tissues and to breast cancer cell lines	ND	Fernandez-Cobo et al (2007)
Non-small-cell lung cancer (123)	IH	Expression of Wnt-5a in 58% of patients	Wnt-5a expression was associated with reduced overall survival and was a bad prognostic indicator	Huang et al (2005)
Gastric cancer (237)	IH	Increased expression detected in 30% of tumours and was frequently seen in tumours of a higher grade	Positivity correlated with advanced stage and poor prognosis	Kurayoshi et al (2006)
Pancreatic cancer (16)	IH	Upregulation in 81% of tumours compared with normal tissue	ND —	Ripka et al (2007)
Prostate cancer (17)	Gene methylation	Reduced methylation in 65% of tumours	ND —	Wang et al (2007)
Melanoma Nevi (8) Primary melanoma (10) Metastases (9)	IH	Low expression 25% of Nevi, expression in 80% of primary melanoma, 89% of metastases showed large regions of expression.	Wnt5a overexpression correlates strongly both to survival and time to the development of metastases	Weeraratna et al (2002)

IH=immunohistochemistry; ND=no data.