1. The prognostic role of EZH2 expression in rectal cancer patients treated with neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy.
- Author
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Meng X, Huang Z, Wang R, Jiao Y, Li H, Xu X, Feng R, Zhu K, Jiang S, Yan H, and Yu J
- Subjects
- Adenocarcinoma mortality, Adenocarcinoma therapy, Aged, Chemoradiotherapy methods, Disease-Free Survival, Enhancer of Zeste Homolog 2 Protein, Female, Humans, Immunohistochemistry, Kaplan-Meier Estimate, Male, Middle Aged, Neoadjuvant Therapy methods, Polycomb Repressive Complex 2 analysis, Prognosis, Proportional Hazards Models, Rectal Neoplasms mortality, Rectal Neoplasms therapy, Retrospective Studies, Adenocarcinoma pathology, Biomarkers, Tumor analysis, Polycomb Repressive Complex 2 biosynthesis, Rectal Neoplasms pathology
- Abstract
Background: Neoadjuvant chemoradiotherapy (nCRT) combined with surgery has been implemented as a standard treatment strategy in locally advanced rectal cancer (LARC). However, there is a wide spectrum of response to nCRT. The aim of this study was to determine whether enhancer of zeste homologue 2 (EZH2 ) expression could predict response to nCRT and outcomes for patients in LARC., Method: The study examined the EZH2 expression in 112 biopsies by immohistochemistry. The associations between EZH2 and clinical characters were analyzed., Results: EZH2 expression in biopsy tissue was significantly related to increased tumor cell proliferation, as assessed by Ki-67 expression with a cutoff value of 37% (p <0.001). High EZH2 expression was correlated closely with low differentiation (p = 0.029), high CEA level (p = 0.041), T4 status (p = 0.011) and node metastasis (p =0.045). By univariate and multivariate analysis, we observed low EZH2 expression could reliably and independently predict the good response to nCRT ( p = 0.026 and p = 0.023) and down-staging ( p = 0.021 and p = 0.027). In univariate analysis, high EZH2 expression was significantly associated with poor 5-year disease-free survival (p = 0.025) and 5-year overall survival (p = 0.032). In multivariate analysis, EZH2 was a prognostic factor for 5-year DFS (HR = 2.287; 95% CI 1.137-4.602, p = 0.020) but not for 5-year OS (HR = 2.182; 95% CI 0.940-5.364, p = 0.069)., Conclusion: Our study revealed that low EZH2 expression in biopsy tissue might be a useful predictive factor of good tumor response to nCRT and longer 5-year DFS in patients with LARC. However this is a relatively small retrospective study, to further validate the role of EZH2 in rectal cancer, large consistent cohort studies are needed.
- Published
- 2014
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