PTK7 as a novel marker for favorable gastric cancer patient survival

Background and Objectives: Protein tyrosine kinase 7 (PTK7) plays important functions in several cancer types but its expression in gastric cancer remains unknown. This study was designed to investigate PTK7 expression in gastric cancer. Methods: PTK7 expression was assessed by immunohistochemistry in 201 gastric cancer patients. The relationship between PTK7 expression and clinicopathological features and patients prognosis were statistically analyzed. Results: PTK7 expression was detected in 56.72% (114 of 201) of gastric cancer patients. The immunostaining was predominantly localized in the cytoplasm. The statistical analyses showed that PTK7 expression was more frequently detected in patients with well-differentiated tumors (P = 0.001). Furthermore, PTK7 expression was significantly related to the favorable overall survival (OS; P = 0.012) and disease-free survival (DFS; P = 0.009). Multivariate Cox regression analyses revealed that PTK7 expression was an independent prognostic factor for both favorable OS (P = 0.028) and DFS (P = 0.012). Conclusion: Our findings demonstrate that PTK7 can serve as a novel prognostic biomarker for gastric cancer patients. J. Surg. Oncol. 2012; 106:880886. (C) 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.