["Histopathologic differentiation between the stages of Barrett's carcinogenesis is often challenging. Liver-intestine (LI)-cadherin, an intestine-specific marker, is involved in intestinal metaplasia development in gastric and colon cancers and could be of value in diagnosis and differentiation.", "To examine the expression of LI-cadherin in the sequence of Barrett's carcinogenesis and to evaluate its association with clinicopathological data.", "LI-cadherin expression was immunohistologically investigated, by use of anti-CDH17 antibody, in gastric mucosa (GM) biopsies taken from the cardia (n\xa0=\xa09), in Barrett's esophagus (BE) without intraepithelial neoplasia (without IEN) (n\xa0=\xa09) and BE with low-grade IEN (n\xa0=\xa011), and in esophageal adenocarcinoma (ADC) (n\xa0=\xa013).", 'The immunoreactivity score was highest in adenocarcinoma (mean IRS\xa0=\xa04.0), and dropped gradually from BE with IEN and BE without IEN (mean IRS\xa0=\xa02.0) to cardia mucosa (IRS\xa0=\xa00). Similarly, the intensity of staining and the percentage of positive cells increased during the sequential stages of BE carcinogenesis. Comparative analysis showed that LI-cadherin expression was significantly different between cardiac epithelium and ADC. Also, percentage of positive cells in GM was significantly different from that in BE with IEN. LI-cadherin IRS was lower for tumors with poor differentiation than for moderately differentiated tumors, but the difference was not statistically significant.'] Is liver-intestine-cadherin a sensitive marker of intestinal differentiation during Barrett 's carcinogenesis?