The hub genes asporin (<i>ASPN</i>), collagen type I α1 chain (<i>COL1A1</i>), fibronectin 1 (<i>FN1</i>), versican (<i>VCAN</i>) and mucin 5AC (<i>MUC5AC</i>) were demonstrated to have prognostic value for patients with GC.
In addition, fukutin expression was observed more frequently in the intestinal phenotype (51 %) of GC than in other phenotypes (37 %) when defined by the expression patterns of mucin 5AC, mucin 6, mucin 2, and CD10.
Our results indicated that some common genetic variations in the MUC5AC gene might have effects on the risk of non-cardia gastric cancer in our studied population.
Several lines of evidence suggest that MUC5AC genetic polymorphisms might confer susceptibility to H. pylori infection and therefore gastric cancer risk.
For sig-type GC, in both tumors and background mucosa, expression of MUC5AC and CTSE is high whereas that of MUC2 is low, indicating that sig-type GC reflects the features of background mucosa.
MUC-2 expression was negatively correlated with tumor size, depth of invasion, and TNM staging of gastric cancer (p<0.05), while that of MUC-5AC was negatively associated with the depth of invasion, venous invasion, lymph node metastasis and TNM staging (p<0.05), but positively with MUC-4 and MUC-2 expression (p<0.05).
This alteration in mucin expression, including the mucin MUC5AC, may be related to the development and prognosis of gastric cancers, and MUC5AC-positive gastric cancer has been reported to be poor prognosis.
To clarify the clinical significance of TSG expression in gastric carcinoma, the expression of various TSG candidates (p53, E-cadherin, FHIT, smad4, rb, VHL, PTEN, MGMT, p16, and KAI1), as well as other proteins (bcl-2, MUC1, MUC2, MUC5AC, MUC6, CEA, CD44, beta-catenin, C-erbB2, and cyclin B2), was evaluated immunohistochemically in 329 consecutive gastric carcinomas using the tissue array method.