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Ep-CAM is a significant prognostic factor in pancreatic cancer patients by suppressing cell activity

Oncogene volume 30, pages 3468–3476 (2011)Cite this article

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Abstract

The identification of molecular markers useful for predicting prognosis in pancreatic cancer patients is crucial for advances in disease management. The epithelial cell adhesion molecule (Ep-CAM) is known to express in most epithelial malignancies and was reported as a tumor marker or a candidate of molecular targeting therapy. However, the clinical significance of Ep-CAM expression in pancreatic cancer is not well-known. We determined the difference of malignant potential between parental and Ep-CAM-transfected pancreatic cancer cell lines by using proliferation, invasion and migration assay. Furthermore, we determined the relationship between tumoral Ep-CAM expression of resected specimens and clinical prognosis in 95 pancreatic cancer patients receiving radical surgery at two different cancer centers. One of the three Ep-CAM-transfected cell lines showed significantly low proliferation rate compared with the parental cell, while there was no difference in the other two cell lines. In invasion and migration assays, Ep-CAM-transfected cells showed significantly lower malignant potential than parental in all of the three cell lines. In 95 pancreatic cancer patients, 47 patients showed high-Ep-CAM expression, while 48 patients showed low, and there was no difference of clinicopathological features between Ep-CAM high and low-expression group. High-Ep-CAM expression group showed significantly good prognosis in overall survival (3-year survival; 56.2 versus 19.2%, P=0.0018) as well as in disease-free survival (3-year survival; 40.3 versus 14.4%, P=0.038) compared with low-expression group. In addition, the impact of Ep-CAM was observed strongly in LN-negative group when the influence of Ep-CAM was examined with dividing patients into LN-positive and negative group. In multivariate analysis, Ep-CAM expression was one of the independent prognostic factors as well as histology and lymph node metastasis. Ep-CAM expression was found to be related to the suppression of pancreatic cancer cell activity and the good prognosis in pancreatic cancer patients receiving the curative resection.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Surgery, Graduate School of Medicine, Osaka University, Osaka, Japan

    H Akita, H Nagano, Y Takeda, H Eguchi, H Wada, S Kobayashi, S Marubashi, M Tanemura, M Mori & Y Doki

  2. Department of Surgery, Osaka Medical Center for Cancer and Cardiovascular Diseases, Osaka, Japan

    H Takahashi, H Ohigashi & O Ishikawa

  3. Department of pathology and cytology, Osaka Medical Center for Cancer and Cardiovascular Diseases, Osaka, Japan

    Y Tomita

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Correspondence to H Nagano.

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Akita, H., Nagano, H., Takeda, Y. et al. Ep-CAM is a significant prognostic factor in pancreatic cancer patients by suppressing cell activity. Oncogene 30, 3468–3476 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/onc.2011.59

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