KK-LC-1 may be an effective prognostic biomarker for gastric cancer

Abstract Background: To detect the expression of Kita-Kyushu lung cancer antigen-1 (KK-LC-1) in gastric cancer (GC) specimens and analyze the associations between KK-LC-1 expression and clinicopathological parameters and clinical prognosis. Methods : A total of 94 patients with GC who underwent surgical resection were enrolled in this study. The expression of KK-LC-1 in GC tissues was detected by immunohistochemistry. The assessment of KK-LC-1 expression was conducted using the H-scoring system. H-score was calculated by the multiplication of the overall staining intensity with the percentage of positive cells. The expression of KK-LC-1 in the cytoplasm and was scored to achieve respective H-score values. The correlations between KK-LC-1 expression and clinicopathological parameters and clinical prognosis were analyzed using Chi-square test, Kaplan-Meier method and Cox regression. Results: In the cytoplasm, the expression of KK-LC-1 in tumor tissues was significantly higher than that in normal tissues (P < 0.001, respectively). Using the median H-score as the cutoff value, it was discovered that, GC patients with higher levels of KK-LC-1expression in the cytoplasm, had favorable overall survival (P =0.016), and it was still statistically meaningful in Cox regression analysis. At the same time, the study found that there was a negative correlation between KK-LC-1’s protein expression and the pathological grade of the tumor (P = 0.036); KK-LC-1 protein is more highly expressed in the intestinal type than the diffuse type, and it is statistically significant. The high expression of KK-LC-1 protein in the intestinal type is more than that in the diffuse type (P =0.008). Conclusions: Our research data shows that KK-LC-1’s expression in GC is higher than that of normal tissues, which is associated with a longer overall survival in GC. KK-LC-1 can be used as a biomarker for GC patients with good prognosis.