Overexpression of Neuron-Specific Enolase as a Prognostic Factor in Patients with Gastric Cancer

Abstract

Purpose: Enolase is a cytoplasmic enzyme that catalyzes the conversion of 2-phosphoglycerate to phosphoenolpyruvate in the glycolytic pathway. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the overexpression of neuron-specific enolase (NSE) can serve as a prognostic factor in patients with gastric cancer (GC). Materials and Methods: To assess its prognostic value in GC, NSE expression was measured by immunohistochemistry in a clinically annotated tissue microarray comprising of 327 human GC specimens. Cytoplasmic NSE expression was scored from 0 to 4, reflecting the percentage of NSE-positive cells. Results: In terms of histology as per the World Health Organization criteria (P= 0.34), there were no differences between the NSE overexpression (NSE-OE) and NSE underexpression (NSE-UE) groups. The NSE-OE group showed a significantly lower rate of advanced GC (P< 0.01), lymph node metastasis (P= 0.01), advanced stage group (P< 0.01), cancer-related death (P< 0.01), and cancer recurrence (P< 0.01). Additionally, a Kaplan-Meier survival analysis revealed that the NSE-OE group had longer cumulative survival times than the NSE-UE group (log-rank test, P< 0.01). However, there were no significant differences in the serum levels of NSE expression in patients with GC and healthy volunteers (P= 0.28). Conclusions: Patients with NSE overexpressing GC tissues showed better prognostic results, implying that NSE could be a candidate biomarker of GC.