TITLE:
Clinical and Pathological Value of MACC-1 Expression in Gastric Carcinoma
AUTHORS:
Abeer Hafez, Tarek El-Gohary, Fouad Abutaleb
KEYWORDS:
Gastric Cancer, MACC-1, HGF/MET Signaling
JOURNAL NAME:
Journal of Cancer Therapy,
Vol.10 No.7,
July
29,
2019
ABSTRACT: Background: Gastric adenocarcinoma is known to be a markedly
invasive disease with
high potential for metastasis. Hepatocyte growth factor (HGF)/HGF receptor (MET) signaling
pathway activation is an assumed mechanism of malignant transformation and
metastatic potential of tumors. Metastasis associated
with colon cancer-1 (MACC-1) has been identified as a key regulator of HGF/MET signaling. However,
its role in gastric cancer is not well understood. Aim of
this study is to assess the expression of MACC-1 in gastric cancer, its relation to
other clinical and pathologic parameters and its impact on progression free and
overall survival. Patient and
Methods: Evaluation of MACC-1 protein expression by immune-histochemistry was done on
paraffin-embedded tissues obtained from 46
patients with gastric cancer, where samples were taken from the tumor and
adjacent normal mucosa. Results: MACC-1 was predominantly localized in the cytoplasm or
membrane of the primary cancer cells. High MACC-1 expression was found in 63.1%
(29/46) of tumor samples, while MACC-1 expression was not detected in normal mucosa
(P 0.01). Expression of MACC-1 was significantly associated with older age,
larger tumor size, deeper
tumor invasion, presence of lymph node metastasis, distant metastasis and advanced clinical stage (p 0.05), while no relation was found with gender, tumor location or
histologic classification (p > 0.05). Progression
free and overall survival were significantly higher in patients with low MACC-1
expression compared to patients with high expression (Log Rank test, p = 0.02
and 0.04, consequently). Conclusion: Our study found that MACC-1 expression is strongly related to gastric cancer stage and both progression free and overall
survival, suggesting that MACC-1 promotes tumorigenesis and its expression may be