The potential prognostic value of expression of stem cell marker of CD44s, EpCAM, and OVA66 in patients with gastric adenocarcinoma.

Abstract

e15562 Background: The present study aimed to (i) examine the expression pattern of putative stem cell markers, CD44s, EpCAM, and new tumor specific antigen OVA66, in gastric adenocarcinoma (GA) and normal para-cancer tissues; (ii) determine if the expression of these proteins is associated with overall survival of GA. Methods: 84 GA patients confirmed by histopathology were examined the expressions of CD44s, EpCAM and OVA66 using tissue microarray technique. The immunohistochemistry analysis were carried out to explore the differential expression CD44s , EpCAM and OVA66 in GA compared to normal para-cancer tissues (p = 0.001). Next, Kaplan-Meier analysis was conducted to investigate their effect in overall survival(OS). Results: The immunohistochemistry analysis demonstrated the differential expression CD44s and EpCAM in GA compared to normal para-cancer tissues (p = 0.001), while there was no significant difference of OVA66 expression between cancer and normal specimens (p = 0.366). The upregulated expression of CD44s was well correlated with lymph node metastasis (p = 0.018), however the expression of OVA66 was only associated with gender of the patients (p = 0.025) and age at presentation (p = 0.018). The univariate analysis demonstrated that patients with blood and lymphatic vessel invasion, pT category 3 to 4, pN positive, with faraway metastasis, and stage Ⅲ to Ⅳ had a significantly shorter OS. Both increased expressions of the CD44s and EpCAM was shown in patients with poor OS (p = 0.037) and was confirmed by multivariate analysis. Conclusions: Our study suggested EpCAM is a potential diagnostic marker for gastric cancer and combined with CD44+/EpCAM+ can be regarded as an independent prognostic marker for patients with GA.