Tetraspanin CD151 expression associated with prognosis for patients with advanced gastric cancer

Tetraspanin CD151 is known to be involved in cancer invasion and metastasis, and its overexpression appears to be associated with a poor prognosis for various types of cancer. However, the expression status of CD151 and its prognostic impact in advanced gastric cancer (AGC) has not yet been clarified.

Immunohistochemistry was used to investigate the expression of CD151, c-erbB2, and c-Met in 159 cases of AGC. The clinicopathological and prognostic significance of these biomarkers were then evaluated.

The overexpression of CD151 was observed in a subset of advanced gastric adenocarcinomas (25.8 %), and c-erbB2 and c-Met were overexpressed in 15.1 and 35.2 % of the cohort, respectively. CD151 overexpression was more frequently observed in tumors from younger patients (P = 0.028). There were close associations between CD151 and c-erbB2 overexpression (P = 0.033) and between c-erbB2 and c-Met overexpression (P = 0.001). CD151 overexpression was closely correlated with patient’ overall survival (OS; P < 0.001) and disease-free survival (DFS; P < 0.001). Furthermore, the expression rate of CD151 seemed to increase gradually according to the depth of invasion (T stage) (χ ² test for trend; P = 0.101), N stage (P = 0.238), and pathologic stage (P = 0.153), although trends were not statistically significant. In a multivariate analysis, CD151 overexpression was an independent prognostic factor predicting worse OS (P = 0.002) and DFS (P = 0.005), along with the T and N stage.

CD151 was found to be an independent prognostic marker for patients with AGC.