The aim of the present study was to investigate the expression of lumican in human gastric cancer and adjacent normal gastric tissues, and study its association with clinicopathological characteristics and survival rate. By using immunohistochemistry, the lumican expression patterns in 146 cases of gastric cancer with various clinicopathological characteristics 55 adjacent normal gastric tissue specimens was studied. And the significance of lumican expression regarding the biological behavior and survival of patients was evaluated. In adjacent normal gastric tissues, lumican was expressed weakly in 10.9% (6/55) of samples. By contrast, the lumican expression rate was 66.4% (97/146) in gastric cancer tissues. Lumican protein expression was closely associated with organ metastasis, lymphatic metastasis and histological type (P<0.05), but not with the tumor location, size, invasion depth or Borrmann type (P>0.05). The median survival time in patients with negative, weakly positive and strongly positive lumican expression was 46.3, 39.6 and 24.3 months, respectively (χ2=8.492; P=0.014). There was a significant association between lumican expression and invasive potential in gastric cancer; therefore, lumican may represent an independent prognostic factor.
Keywords: gastric cancer; lumican; small leucine-rich proteoglycans.