Thrombomodulin expression impacts the recurrence and long-term survival in pancreatic cancer

Pancreatic cancer is one of the most aggressive digestive cancers. The tumor expression of thrombomodulin (TM) is correlated with favorable prognosis in several types of cancer. However, this correlation has not been confirmed in hepato-pancreato-biliary cancer. The aim of this study was to evaluate the prognostic value of TM expression in resected pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma.

The data of patients who underwent pancreatic resection for pancreatic invasive ductal adenocarcinoma were obtained from a prospectively maintained database. A total of 131 patients were included. Paraffin sections of tumor tissues were stained immunohistochemically using TM antibody. The patients were divided into two groups: the TM-positive or TM-negative group.

The specimens were TM-positive in 72 cases. TM expression was a significant factor of favorable prognosis in univariate analysis for disease-free (DFS) and overall survival (OS). The median OS in the TM-positive patients was 32.9 mo, which was better than the 20.0 mo in TM-negative patients (P =.006). TM positivity retained its significance on multivariate analysis for DFS (hazard ratio [HR] 0.651, 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.433-0.979, P =.039) and OS (HR 0.569, 95% CI 0.376-0.862, P =.008).

The tumor expression of TM is a favorable factor for OS in resected pancreatic invasive ductal adenocarcinoma.