RESUMO
Gastric cancer (GC) is a major health problem worldwide and is one of the ten most commonly diagnosed cancers in Jordan. GC is usually diagnosed at late aggressive stages in which treatment options are limited. Recently, heat shock proteins (HSPs) found to be overexpressed in a wide range of malignancies have been considered as promising candidate biomarkers for GC. The aim of this study was to investigate pathogenic roles of a panel of cytosolic HSPs including HSP90, HSP70, HSP60 and HSP27 in GC. Immunohistochemistry was used to assess the level of expression of these proteins in archived tumor samples (N=87) representing various pathological characteristics of GC. HSP90, HSP60 and HSP27 were expressed abundantly in gastric tumors. On the other hand, HSP70 was reduced significantly and was also found to be associated with Helicobacter pylori infection in tissues collected from GC patients. Furthermore, HSP27 was found to be associated with the level of differentiation. Our findings indicate a role of HSP70 as a potential prognostic biomarker, patients harboring positive HSP70 expression displaying worse disease free survival than those with negative HSP70 expression. Differential expression of HSPs may play crucial roles in the initiation and progression of GC, and could be exploited as future therapeutic targets.
