Association of proteomics with lymph node metastasis in early gastric cancer patients

Surgical decision making for early gastric cancer (EGC) is heavily influenced by its metastasis into the lymph nodes. Currently, the clinicopathological features of EGC cannot be used to accurately distinguish between EGC patients with and without lymph node metastasis. Our retrospective case-matching study included a total of 132 samples from 66 pairs of EGC patients with or without lymph node metastasis and conducted proteomic assays. By comparing the lymph node metastasis group and the nonmetastasis group, we found that two proteins, GABARAPL2 and NAV1, were significantly associated with lymph node metastasis in EGC patients. Our prediction model using protein biomarkers had good prediction accuracy, with an area under the curve (AUC) of 0.87, a sensitivity of 0.78, a specificity of 0.89, and an accuracy of 0.84, which can help distinguish between EGC patients with and without lymph node metastasis and guide the decision-making process for performing tailored surgery.