Increased expression of CD147 and MMP-9 is correlated with poor prognosis of salivary duct carcinoma

The aim of this study was to investigate expression of CD147 and MMP-9 in salivary duct carcinoma (SDC) so as to determine whether these two genes may be correlated with poor prognosis of SDC. We examined the significance of the CD147 and MMP-9 expression in SDC (n = 35), non-cancerous salivary tissue (n = 20) in previously untreated patients using immunohistochemical staining. Furthermore, we analyzed the correlation between the expression of these two genes and various clinicopathologic factors including survival status of patients with SDC. Positive stain of CD147 and MMP-9 was seen in all 35 cases of tumor samples. A statistical correlation was observed between CD147 and MMP-9 expression in SDC tissues. The incidences of high expression were 45.71% for CD147 and 51.43% for MMP-9 in 35 SDC tissues, respectively. High expression of CD147 and MMP-9 was significantly correlated with clinical feature and shorter progression-free survival (PFS) (P (CD147) = 0.031; P (MMP-9) = 0.020) and overall survival (OS) (P (CD147) = 0.044; P (MMP-9) = 0.013). CD147 and MMP-9 expression is correlated with invasion, metastasis and shorter PFS/OS of SDC. Patients with high expression of CD147 and MMP-9 had poor prognosis than SDC patients with low expression.