Affiliations: Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery, Provincial Hospital Affiliated to Shandong University, Jinan, Shandong, China
Correspondence:
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Corresponding author: Le-Ping Li, Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery, Provincial Hospital Affiliated to Shandong University, Jinan 250021, Shandong, China. E-mail: lileping196409@163.com
Abstract:
BACKGROUND: Vezatin is an transmembrane protein associated with
cell-cell adhesion junctions. In our previous studies, we found that the
tumor suppressor function of VEZT was related to methylation of CpG island
and were down-regulated in tumor tissue and cells compared to normal
controls. However, the role of VEZT gene as a novel putative tumor
suppressor in biological characteristics and the relationship with
clinicopathological factors and prognosis of gastric cancer was not yet
clear. Therefore, we sought to explore these questions and prepare for
further research in this study. METHODS: We examined the vezatin
expression levels in 119 gastric cancer tissues and adjacent normal tissues
by immunohistochemistry. Furthermore, we evaluated the expression of VEZT
and its relationship with clinicopathological factors, lymphatic metastasis
and prognostic value for gastric cancer. RESULTS: The expression of
VEZT was significantly down-regulated in gastric cancer tissues and cell
lines and its expression levels was related to differentiation, TNM staging
and lymphatic metastasis. Furthermore, analysis of 5-year survival of 119
gastric cancer patients showed that those with strong vezatin expression had
significantly longer overall survival time than those with negative vezatin expression. CONCLUSIONS: These data provided an innovative insight that
up-regulation of vezatin can be taken as a meaningful way for treating human
gastric and other types of cancers. And VEZT expression levels can be
considered as a biomarker for gastric cancer progression, lymphatic
metastasis and as a novel independent prognostic factor.
