Immunohistochemical expression of nuclear and cytoplasmic survivin in gastrointestinal carcinoma

Survivin is a protein that is highly expressed in many embryonic tissues, as well as most human tumors. Prior studies have reported both positive and negative correlations between survivin expression and cancer prognosis, but these associations remain controversial. In the present study, we assessed the expression of nuclear and cytoplasmic survivin in gastrointestinal carcinomas. Using these data, we determined the correlation between nuclear and cytoplasmic survivin and, further, investigated correlations between survivin expression and clinicopathological parameters. Seventy-two advanced gastric adenocarcinomas and 78 colorectal adenocarcinomas were analyzed for survivin expression by immunohistochemistry. Expression of both nuclear and cytoplasmic survivin was significantly higher in colorectal carcinomas than in gastric carcinomas (P < 0.01). There was a positive correlation between nuclear and cytoplasmic expression of survivin (r = 0.42, P < 0.001). In gastric carcinomas, the level of survivin protein expression was associated with tumor differentiation, patient age, and lymphatic invasion (P < 0.05, 0.01, and 0.01, respectively). In colorectal carcinomas, the level of nuclear survivin expression was significantly higher in females than in males (P < 0.05). There were no significant associations between survivin expression and most of the clinicopathological parameters. Nevertheless, there was a trend towards an inverse correlation between nuclear survivin expression and tumor aggressiveness in gastric carcinoma; there was a similar trend for cytoplasmic survivin expression. In summary, our results suggest that levels of nuclear and cytoplasmic survivin expression differ between gastric carcinoma and colorectal carcinoma.