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Updated: Apr 30, 2026
Author Spotlight: High-Sensitivity Tissue Factor Activity Assay for Plasma Diagnosis
Published on: December 29, 2023
Tissue factor predicts response to chemotherapy in esophageal cancer
Masaaki Motoori1, Masahiko Yano1, Yasuhiko Tomita2
1Department of Surgery, Osaka Medical Center for Cancer and Cardiovascular Diseases, Osaka, Japan.
Background:
Neoadjuvant chemotherapy (NACT) improves the prognosis of patients with esophageal cancer who respond, but it is not effective in nonresponders. Therefore, it is crucial to establish a reliable method of predicting response before initiation of chemotherapy. Hypercoagulability, which is thought to be because of upregulation of tissue factor (TF) in cancer cells, was reported to be associated with chemoresistance. The aim of this study was to investigate the association between TF expression and response to NACT in esophageal cancer.
Methods:
In 67 patients with advanced esophageal cancer, TF expression in pretreatment biopsy samples was evaluated immunohistochemically and correlated with clinicopathologic factors and response to chemotherapy.
Results:
TF was expressed by 43.3% of the tumors, but there were no correlations observed with any clinicopathologic parameters examined. Clinical and histologic responses to chemotherapy were significantly worse in TF-positive patients compared with TF-negative patients. Multivariate analysis revealed that TF expression was significantly associated with a poor clinical response (P = 0.0431). TF expression was also independently associated with poor progression-free survival (P = 0.0353).
Conclusions:
TF expression levels in pretreatment biopsy samples are useful for predicting response to NACT in advanced esophageal cancer. Further studies of mechanisms underlying the relationship between TF expression and chemosensitivity are needed.
