High expression of integrin-linked kinase predicts aggressiveness and poor prognosis in patients with gastric cancer
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Updated: May 3, 2026

Author Spotlight: Advancing Early Detection and Treatment of Gastrointestinal Tumors
Published on: February 16, 2024
Xiaohu Gu1, Xiaojing Xing2, Wei Yang3
1Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery and Cancer Center, The Fourth Affiliated Hospital of China Medical University, Shenyang 110032, People's Republic of China; Department of Surgical Oncology, Liaoning Cancer Hospital and Institute, Shenyang 110042, People's Republic of China.
Abstract:
Integrin-linked kinase (ILK), an intracellular serine/threonine protein kinase, has been reported to be highly expressed in many human malignancies, including gastric cancer. However, the prognostic significance of ILK expression in gastric cancer remains to be elucidated. In the present study, ILK expression in 95 gastric tumor tissues and 30 adjacent non-cancerous gastric mucosa was evaluated by immunohistochemistry and correlated with clinicopathological characteristics and patients' outcome. The results showed that high ILK expression was observed in 47.4% (45/95) of gastric cancer tissues, but only in 20.0% (6/30) of adjacent gastric mucosa. Clinicopathological analysis indicated that high ILK expression was significantly associated with poor tumor differentiation (P=0.024), advanced TNM stage (P=0.006), tumor invasion (P=0.001), and lymph node metastasis (P=0.014). Kaplan-Meier survival curves demonstrated that patients with high ILK expression had substantially shorter overall survival that those with low ILK expression (P=0.043, log-rank test). Furthermore, Cox multivariate regression analysis identified ILK expression as an independent prognostic factor for overall survival of gastric cancer patients (hazard ratio, 1.95; 95% confidence interval, 1.02-3.13; P=0.026). In conclusion, our data suggest that ILK may contribute to the malignant progression of gastric cancer and serve as a novel prognostic indicator for gastric cancer patients.
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