Objectives: Pancreatic cancer (PC) is one of the most lethal tumors of the gastrointestinal tract. The ability to predict which patients would benefit most from surgical intervention and chemotherapy would be a great clinical tool. A large number of potential markers have been identified lately in pancreatic cancer and their clinical utilities as prognostic tools are under investigation.
Methods: We recruited 41 patients who had undergone radical surgical resection for PC between 2003 and 2010. To investigate the prognostic factors, we evaluated 3 possible markers: B7H4, HSP27 and DJ-1 protein expressions in the tissue specimens of these 41 patients by immunohistochemistry and analyzed the clinical and pathological features of these specimens.
Results: The expression of the three antigens was independently associated with a negative impact of chemotherapy with gemcitabine on patient's survival. Moreover, patients who overexpressed B7H4 had worse prognosis than the ones who did not.
Conclusions: B7H4, DJ-1 and HSP27 may be used in the future as prognostic markers that express resistance of pancreatic cancer patients to chemotherapy with gemcitabine.
Keywords: Biomarkers; Chemotherapy resistance; Immunohistochemistry; Pancreatic cancer.
Copyright © 2013 IAP and EPC. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.