Purpose: To investigate the expression of TSP50 protein in human gastric cancers and its correlation with clinical/prognostic significance.Methods: Immunohistochemistry (IHC) analysis of TSP50 was performed on a tissue microarray (TMA) containing 334 primary gastric cancers.Western blot was carried out to confirm the expression of TSP50 in gastric cancers.Results: IHC analysis revealed high expression of TSP50 in 57.2% human gastric cancer samples (191 out of 334).However,it was poorly expressed in all of the 20 adjacent non-tumor tissues.This was confirmed by western blot,which showed significantly higher levels of TSP50 expression in gastric cancer tissues than adjacent non-tumor tissues.A significant association was found between high levels of TSP50 and clinicopathological characteristics including junior age at surgery (P=0.001),later TNM stage (P=0.000),and present lymphnode metastases (P=0.003).The survival of gastric cancer patients with high expression of TSP50 was significantly shorter than that of the patients with low levels of TSP50 (P=0.021).Multivariate Cox regression analysis indicated that TSP50 overexpression was an independent prognostic factor for gastric cancer patients (P=0.017).Conclusions: Our data demonstrate that elevated TSP50 protein expression could be a potential predictor of poor prognosis in gastric cancer patients.
gastric cancer testes-specific protease 50 cancer-testis antigen prognosis
Fang Liu Qinghua Cao Ni Liu Changzhao Li Changxuan You Chuanxin Liu Ling Xue Rongcheng Luo
Cancer Center,Southern Medical University,Guangzhou,510315,China;Tranditional Chinese Medicine-Integ Department of Pathology,The First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University,Guangzhou,510080,Chi Department of Dermatology and Skin Diseases Research Center,University of Alabama at Birmingham,Birm Department of Medical Oncology,Nanfang Hospital,Southern Medical University,Guangzhou,510515,China Cancer Center,Southern Medical University,Guangzhou,510315,China;Tranditional Chinese Medicine-Integ