The Prognostic Significance of ErbB1 (EGFR) Expressions in Patients with Curative Resection for Colorectal Cancers

ABSTRACT

PURPOSE: The ErbB family is associated with cell growth, differentiation, cell survival, apoptosis, cell cycle progression, angiogenesis. In this study, the expressions of ErbB family of colorectal cancer specimen were investigated to determined correlations between the clinicopathologic characteristics and the expression of ErbB family in the curative resection for colorectal cancers, including cancer specific survival. METHODS: Patients who underwent the curative surgery for colorectal cancers from January 1997 to December 2000 at Ansan Medical Center, Korea University College of Medicine were enrolled in this study, and one hundred ninety six of colorectal cancer. The clinical relationship between the expression of ErbB family for colon adenocarcinoma and clinicopathologic characteristic factors including survival were analyzed. RESULTS: There was no clinical relationship of the expression of ErbB family with clinicopatholologic characteristics. However, survival analysis demonstrated that 5 year survival rates (5YSR) of patients with the positive expression of ErbB1 (EGFR) was lower than those of the negative expression of ErbB1 (P<0.05) in colorectal cancer patients. Moreover 5YSR of the positive expression of ErbB1 was lower than that of negative expression of ErbB1 in well differentiation subgroup, node negative subgroup, node positive subgroup, and also stage T3 subgroup (P<0.05). CONCLUSIONS: The positive ErbB1 expression of colorectal cancer was one of poor prognostic factors in patients with colorectal cancer in this study. We need the further study to prove the real relation between target therapy for the positive expression of ErbB1 (EGFR) in colorectal cancer and the improvement of survival rate.