Prognostic significance of CD24 expression in gastric carcinoma

The human CD24 antigen is a small heavily glycosylated cell surface protein, which is expressed in hematological malignancies, as well as in a large variety of solid tumors. Its expression is now known to be related to the prognosis of several kinds of tumors. This study is designed to examine the prognostic significance of CD24 in Korean gastric cancer patients.

In the present study, we examined CD24 expression in 300 consecutive cases of gastric carcinoma by immunohistochemical staining using the tissue-array method. We also investigated the clinicopathological profiles related to CD24 expression.

One hundred and three cases out of 300 (34.3%) showed the positive expression of CD24. The altered expression of CD24 was significantly associated with differentiated cancer (p=0.003), the intestinal subtype according to the Lauren classification (p<0.001), the advanced stage cancer (p=0.027), with lymphatic invasion (p=0.038) and with vascular invasion (p=0.006). The survival analysis revealed that the patients with CD24 positive expression showed significantly poorer survival than those without CD24 expression. Moreover, a combined evaluation revealed that PTEN+/CD24- cases showed the best survival compared to other groups (p=0.01).

Positive CD24 expression occurs in a subset of gastric carcinomas and it correlates significantly with lymphatic invasion, blood vessel invasion and poor survival.