Int J Biol Sci 2011; 7(1):53-60. doi:10.7150/ijbs.7.53 This issue Cite
Research Paper
1. The State Key Laboratory of Oncology in Southern China and Department of Experimental Research, Cancer Center, Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou 510060, P.R. China.
2. State Key Laboratory of Oncology in South China, 651 Dongfeng Road East, Guangzhou 510060, China; Department of Gastric and Pancreatic Surgery, Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center, 651 Dongfeng Road East, Guangzhou 510060, China.
3. Immunotherapy Asia Center, Kuramae-kaikan 4F, 3-1-1 Kuramae, Taito-ku, Tokyo 111-0051, Japan.
4. Department of Surgery, University of Michigan Medical Center, 1520A MSRB-1, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-0666, USA.
In this study, we characterized the intratumoral expression of IL-17 and CD8+ TILs in gastric adenocarcinoma patients after resection and determined the correlation between the survival probability of gastric adenocarcinoma patients and the expression of IL-17 in tumor. Expression of IL-17 and CD8 was assessed by immunohistochemistry, and the prognostic effects of intratumoral IL-17 expression and CD8+ TILs were evaluated by Cox regression and Kaplan-Meier analysis. Immunohistochemical detection revealed the presence of IL-17 and CD8+ cells in gastric adenocarcinoma tissue samples (90.6%, 174 out of 192 patients and 96.9%, 186 out of 192 patients, respectively). We have also found that intratumoral IL-17 expression was significantly correlated with age (p=0.004) and that the number of CD8+ TILs was significantly correlated with UICC staging (p=0.012) and the depth of tumor invasion (p=0.022). The five-year overall survival probability among patients intratumorally expressing higher levels of IL-17 was significantly better than those expressing lower levels of IL-17 (p=0.036). Multivariate Cox proportional hazard analyses revealed that intratumoral IL-17 expression (HR: 0.521; 95% CI: 0.329-0.823; p=0.005) was an independent factor affecting the five-year overall survival probability. We conclude that low levels of intratumoral IL-17 expression may indicate poor prognosis in gastric adenocarcinoma patients.
Keywords: IL-17, intratumoral expression, gastric carcinoma, prognostic indicator