Protein profiling of alpha-fetoprotein producing gastric adenocarcinoma

// Liang He 1 , Fei Ye 2 , Linlin Qu 3 , Daguang Wang 1 , Miao Cui 2 , Chengguo Wei 4 , Yanpeng Xing 1 , Peng Lee 5 , Jian Suo 1 , David Y. Zhang 2 1 Department of Gastrointestinal Surgery, First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, China 2 Department of Pathology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA 3 Department of Clinical Laboratory, First Hospital of Jilin University, Changchun, China 4 Department of Nephrology, Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, New York, NY, USA 5 Department of Pathology, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY, USA Correspondence to: Jian Suo, email: suojian0066@126.com David Y. Zhang, email: david.zhang@mssm.edu Keywords: AFP, gastric cancer, signaling pathways, survival analysis Received: December 01, 2015 Accepted: February 28, 2016 Published: April 4, 2016 ABSTRACT Alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) producing gastric adenocarcinoma is considered as a rare subtype of gastric adenocarcinoma. Compared with AFP non-producing gastric adenocarcinoma, our study and other previous studies showed that AFP producing gastric adenocarcinoma is more aggressive and prone to liver metastasis. Using the Protein Pathway Array, 11 of out of 286 proteins tested were found to be differentially expressed between AFP producing (n=32) and AFP non-producing (n=45) gastric adenocarcinoma tissues. In addition, the high level expression of XIAP and IGF-Irβ in gastric adenocarcinoma tissues was independent factors for poor prognosis in AFP producing gastric adenocarcinoma patients. A risk model based on the XIAP and IGF-Irβ expression levels can separate AFP producing gastric adenocarcinoma patients into 2 subgroups and each subgroup had a distinct set of signaling pathways involved. In conclusion, AFP producing gastric adenocarcinoma is a heterogeneous cancer with different clinical outcomes, biological behaviors and underlying molecular alterations.