RESUMO
Background and purpose:Chemotherapy plays an important role in the treatment of gastric cancer.It is becoming a direction that the choice of chemotherapeutic agent for the clinic will be based on the levels of some relative gene expressions in the tumor tissue.As the key enzymes of fluoropyrimidines,the expression levels of thymidylate synthase(TS) and thymidine phosphorylase(TP) may correlate with the response of tumor to chemotherapy.This study was to investigate the expression of TS and TP mRNA in gastric cancer tissues and their correlation with prognosis.Methods:The expression levels of TS,TP mRNA in 51 gastric adenocarcinoma tissues were detected by real-time quantitative reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction(RT-PCR).Results:The median expression levels of TS,TP mRNA were 0.94 and 21.20,respectively.There was significant difference in terms of disease-free and overall survival between the gastric cancer patients with high and low TS mRNA expression level(P0.05)but not overall survival(P0.05).Conclusions:The expression levels of TS,TP mRNA may serve as prognostic markers for gastric cancer patients treated with FU-based adjuvant chemotherapy.