Clinical study on the expression of EGFR in pancreatic adenosquamous carcinoma / 中华肝胆外科杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective:Exploration of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) expression and its clinical significance in pancreatic adenosquamous carcinoma (PASC).Methods:A total of 60 pancreatic cancer tissue samples and 8 normal pancreatic tissue samples were obtained from patients who were surgically treated at Beijing Chao-Yang Hospital, Capital Medical University from January 2016 to December 2021. A retrospective analysis of the clinical and pathological data of these 60 patients was conducted, including 23 males and 37 females with an age of (62.7±10.2) years. Among them, 20 cases were pathologically diagnosed as PASC, and 40 contemporaneous cases of pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) were selected through propensity score matching. Immunohistochemistry (IHC) staining was used to measure the integrated optical density (IOD) of EGFR expression, and quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) was employed to detect the expression differences of EGFR mRNA. Based on the median IOD value of EGFR, the 20 PASC samples were divided into two groups, high and low expression groups. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis was performed to compare the impact of EGFR expression on the prognosis of PASC patients.Results:The IOD value of EGFR in PASC group (29.2 [25.7, 35.1]) was significantly higher than that in the PDAC group [9.5 (5.5, 13.0)] and they both exceeded the value in normal tissues [2.4 (1.7, 3.1)], with statistical significances ( all P<0.001 ). The level of EGFR mRNA expression in the PASC group was higher than that in the PDAC group [3.0 (1.8, 3.5) vs 1.2 (0.8, 1.2)], showing statistically significant difference ( P=0.0079). Patients with high EGFR expression had shorter overall survival compared with patients with low expression ( P=0.002). The incidence of vascular invasion in the PASC group [40.0% (8/20)] was higher than that in the PDAC group [17.5% (7/40)], with a significant difference ( P=0.002). The median survival time for the PASC group was 16.00 (9.25, 25.25) months, which was shorter than that of the PDAC group 21.50 (11.25, 40.75) months, showing a statistically significant difference ( P=0.033). The overall survival rate of the PASC group was lower than PDAC group ( P=0.028). Conclusion:EGFR expression is significantly elevated in PASC tissues and PASC patients have poor prognosis.