The Relationship Between OLFM4 Protein Expression And Clinical-pathologic Characteristics And Prognosis Of Gastric Cancer

PART 1. The relationship between OLFM4 protein and clinical-pathologic characteristics and prognosis of gastric cancerAbstract:Objective Exploring the relationship between clinical-pathological characteristics and the expression of OLFM4 protein in gastric tumor tissues. Also evaluating the impact of OLFM4 protein expression on the prognostic of gastric cancer patients after radical surgery. Methods Collecting the clinical-pathological characteristics and follow-up information of 102 gastric carcinoma patients who underwent D2 radical resection at Zhongshan Hospital of Fudan University from February 1999 to December 2005. The resected samples were made into tissue microarrarys. By using immunohistochemistry, we evaluated the expression of OLFM4 protein in tumor and paratumor tissues, and then conducted a correlation analysis between protein expression and clinical-pathological characteristics as well as prognosis of these patients. Results We found that OLFM4 protein expression was higher in tumor tissues and intestinal metaplasia tissues than in normal tissues (p<0.05). Besides, the expression of OLFM4 protein was also related to tumor depth (p=0.008), lymph node metastasis (p=0.013), distant metastasis (p=0.021), TNM stage (p=0.003), degree of pathological differentiation (p=0.012) and Lauren type (p=0.039). The overall survival time (OS) of positive expression patients are longer than negative expression patients (p=0.011) with Kaplan-Meier method, but it was not an independent prognostic factor. Conclusion Enhanced OLFM4 protein expression was more frequently seen in intestine metaplasia tissues, early stage, high differentiation and intestinal-type adenocarcinoma tissues and it was a favorable factor for the prognosis of gastric cancer patients.PART 2. The risk factors for lymph node metastasis of early gastric cancer and the predict value of OLFM4 protein expressionAbstract:Objective To investigate the risk factors for lymph node metastasis of early gastric cancer and the predict value of OLFM4 protein expression. Methods We retrospectively analyzed the clinical-pathological data of 31 patients with early gastric cancer treated at Zhongshan Hospital of Fudan University from February 1999 to December 2005. The relationship between lymph node metastasis and clinical-pathological factors as well as OFM4 protein expression was evaluated. Results The correlation analysis demonstrated that age, gender, tumor size, location, degree of pathological differentiation and Lauren type were not associated with lymph node metastasis of early gastric cancer. Though there existed a tendency that patients with enhanced OLFM4 protein expression had lower probability to have lymph node metastasis, no statistic significance was manifested (p=0.155). Conclusion Clinical-pathologic characteristics and OLFM4 protein expression are not valuable in predicting the lymph node metastasis of early gastric cancer.