Objective: To study the expression of B7-H3 mRNA and B7-H3 protein in gastric carcinoma and their clinical significance.
Methods: The expression of B7-H3 mRNA and B7-H3 protein in gastric carcinoma and the nearby normal tissue of 38 patients was detected by real-time RT-PCR and immunohistochemical assay respectively.
Results: B7-H3 mRNA was expressed both in gastric carcinoma and nearby normal tissue, but the expression level in gastric carcinoma was much lower than that in nearby normal tissue. There were no significant differences of B7-H3 mRNA expression among gender, age, histological type, tumor size, lymph node metastasis and invasive depth (all P >0.05). The positive rate of B7-H3 protein expressed in gastric carcinoma was 39.5%. There were no significant differences of B7-H3 protein expression among gender, age, histological type, tumor size, lymph node metastasis and invasive depth (all P >0.05), but there were significant differences among groups of clinical stage (P=0.022) and pathological grade (P=0.039). Kaplan-Meier analysis revealed that disease-free survival or overall survival of the patients with positive B7-H3 expression were significantly longer than those with negative B7-H3 expression (P=0.009 and P=0.010 respectively).
Conclusion: Detection of B7-H3 expression in gastric carcinoma will be beneficial to the judgment of the prognosis of gastric carcinoma and the choice of individualized treatment.