VEZT as a novel independent prognostic factor in gastric cancer.

BACKGROUND: Vezatin is an transmembrane protein associated with cell-cell adhesion junctions. In our previous studies, we found that the tumor suppressor function of VEZT was related to methylation of CpG island and were down-regulated in tumor tissue and cells compared to normal controls. However, the role of VEZT gene as a novel putative tumor suppressor in biological characteristics and the relationship with clinicopathological factors and prognosis of gastric cancer was not yet clear. Therefore, we sought to explore these questions and prepare for further research in this study. METHODS: We examined the vezatin expression levels in 119 gastric cancer tissues and adjacent normal tissues by immunohistochemistry. Furthermore, we evaluated the expression of VEZT and its relationship with clinicopathological factors, lymphatic metastasis and prognostic value for gastric cancer. RESULTS: The expression of VEZT was significantly down-regulated in gastric cancer tissues and cell lines and its expression levels was related to differentiation, TNM staging and lymphatic metastasis. Furthermore, analysis of 5-year survival of 119 gastric cancer patients showed that those with strong vezatin expression had significantly longer overall survival time than those with negative vezatin expression. CONCLUSIONS: These data provided an innovative insight that up-regulation of vezatin can be taken as a meaningful way for treating human gastric and other types of cancers. And VEZT expression levels can be considered as a biomarker for gastric cancer progression, lymphatic metastasis and as a novel independent prognostic factor.

Semaphorin 4D and hypoxia-inducible factor-1α overexpression is related to prognosis in colorectal carcinoma.

AIM: To investigate semaphorin 4D (Sema4D) and hypoxia-inducible factor-1α (HIF-1α) expression in colorectal carcinoma and evaluate their clinicopathological and prognostic significance. METHODS: Eighty-six curatively resected colorectal carcinoma patients at different stages of disease were randomly selected from the group of patients who underwent surgery, and none of them received preoperative radiochemotherapy. Normal proximal adjacent bowel tissue, which served as an internal control, was obtained from 52 randomly selected patients. Immunohistochemistry was performed to analyze the expression of Sema4D and the tumor angiogenesis-related protein HIF-1α in normal colorectal tissues and colorectal carcinoma tissues. The relationships between the expression and clinical characters and prognosis were analyzed. RESULTS: HIF-1α and Sema4D were positively expressed in 58% and 60% of colorectal carcinoma tissues, respectively. Significantly lower expression levels were observed in normal mucosa (8% and 12%, respectively). HIF-1α and Sema4D expression was closely correlated with histological tumor type, tumor-node-metastasis (TNM) stage, and lymphatic metastasis (P<0.05), but not with age or tumor size (P>0.05). HIF-1α and Sema4D protein expression was significantly correlated with prognosis of colorectal carcinoma, as determined by Spearman rank correlation analysis (r=0.567; P<0.01). Multivariate Cox analysis revealed that only Sema4D expression played a significant role in predicting patient prognosis (P<0.05). CONCLUSION: These findings suggest that HIF-1α and Sema4D expression correlates with histological tumor type, TNM stage, and lymphatic metastasis in colorectal carcinoma and that Sema4D is a prognostic indicator of colorectal carcinoma.

Clinicopathologic and prognostic characteristics of triple-negative breast cancer.

BACKGROUND: Triple-negative breast cancer (estrogen receptor (ER)-, progesterone receptor (PR)-, and HER2-negative) is a rare subtype with a poor prognosis. However, the clinicopathologic and prognostic characteristics of triple-negative breast cancer remain undetermined. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Immunohistochemical staining was adopted to examine the expressions of ER, PR, p53, C-erbB-2 (HER2), vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), and epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) protein in 116 samples of paraffin-embedded breast cancer tissues. RESULTS: 22 triple-negative breast cancers were found among 116 informative cases (19%). The triple-negative phenotype significantly correlates with tumor size, histological grade, lymph node status, p53, and EGFR (p < 0.05), and not significantly with age, menopausal status, and VEGF protein. After a median follow-up period of 96 months (range: 32-123 months), 12 triple-negative breast cancer patients and 20 patients with non-triple-negative phenotype had distant relapse (p < 0.05). Survival analysis showed that triple-negative phenotype was inversely associated with overall survival (p < 0.05) but not significantly with disease-free survival (p = 0.2877). Multivariate Cox model analysis showed that tumor size, lymph node status, histological grade, and triple-negative phenotype provided independent significant predictive power. CONCLUSION: Triple-negative breast cancer phenotype has specific clinical and biological characteristics. Patients with triple-negative breast cancer have a poorer prognosis. So far, there is no conclusive effective treatment, which necessitates further studies.