Qian Niansong, Dai Guanghai

Department of Oncology, PLA General Hospital

Objective:The aim of this study was to investigate the clinicopathological and prognostic relevance of metastasis associated with lysyl oxidase (LOX), vascular endothelial growth factor-A(VEGF-A), Hypoxia inducible factor 1 alpha (HIF1α) and Platelet-derived growth factor receptor β (PDGFR-β) in gastric cancer. Method: All 166 patients included in the study were gastric cancer and had complete follow-up information from January 2007 to June 2008 and was detected the correlation of the clinicopathology and therapy with their survival. The expression profiles of LOX, VEGF-A, HIF1α and PDGFR-β in association with the clinicopathological factors were determined by immunohistochemistry, and their prognostic values were investigated by comparing the survival rate between positive and negative patients. Result: The median follow-up time of the 166 gastric cancer patients was 64.3 months. There were 110 patients was recurrence or metastasis (66.3%) and 101 patients died (60.8%). The DFS was 25.4 months and the OS was 35.2 months. The over expression rate of LOX in the tissues of gastric cancer (39.8%) was significantly higher than that in non-cancerous adjacent gastric tissue (18.6%). The DFS and OS in the weak-expression group were significantly longer than the overexpression group (DFS: 31.3 months vs 15.1 months, P=0.005; OS: 49.2 months vs 21.9 months, P=0.004). So was in VEGF-A (DFS: 31.3 months vs 17.5 months, P=0.019; OS: 50.2 months vs26.4 months, P=0.034), HIF1α (DFS: 27.0 months vs 16.1 months, P=0.048; OS: 39.8 months vs 20.4 months, P=0.046), PDGFR-β (DFS: 30.4 months vs 15.1 months, P=0.040; OS: 46.8 months vs 22.5 months, P=0.007) overexpression groups. In addition, patients with LOX, VEGF-A, HIF1α and PDGFR-β co-overexpression had significantly poorer outcomes than the negative group (OS: 5.8 vs 48 months, P=0.002) and (DFS: 3.9 months vs 37.3 months, P=0.002). Moreover, LOX, Borrmann types, TNM stages and adjuvant chemotherapy cycles were independent prognostic factors for DFS (P=0.047, 0.016, 0.000 and 0.000, respectively) and OS (P=0.010, 0.000, 0.000 and 0.000, respectively). Conclusion: LOX is an independent prognostic marker of DFS and OS of gastric cancer patients. Further studies are needed to investigate the precise function of LOX in the progression of gastric cancer.

Key Words: LOX  gastric cancer  prognosis