CD44 Variant 9 Serves as a Poor Prognostic Marker in Early Gastric Cancer, But Not in Advanced Gastric Cancer / Journal of the Korean Cancer Association, 대한암학회지
The present study is to investigate the significance of CD44 variant 9 (CD44v9) expression as a biomarker in primary gastric cancer. MATERIALS AND
METHODS:
With various gastric tissues, we performed immunohistochemical staining for CD44v9.
RESULTS:
The positive expression rates for CD44v9 in tumor, including adenoma, early gastric cancer (EGC), and advanced gastric cancer (AGC), were higher than those in non-tumortissues (p=0.003). In addition, the higher expression for CD44v9 was observed as the tissue becomes malignant. In the analysis of 333 gastric cancertissues, we found that positive expression rates for CD44v9 were higher in the intestinal type or well differentiated gastric cancer than in the diffuse type or poorly differentiated gastric cancer. Interestingly, the positive expression indicated poor prognosis in EGC (5-year survival rate [5-YSR] in stage I, 81.7% vs. 95.2%; p=0.013), but not in AGC (5-YSR in stage II, 66.9% vs. 62.2%; p=0.821; 5-YSR in stage III, 34.5% vs. 32.0%; p=0.929). Moreover, strong positive expression (3+) showed a trend suggesting worse prognosis only in EGC, and it appeared to be associated with lymph node metastasis.