MAGE-A family is involved in gastric cancer progression and indicates poor prognosis of gastric cancer patients.

BACKGROUND: As the best characterized CTA family members, melanoma-associated antigens (MAGE) have been reported to express in various malignant tumors. However, the expression pattern of MAGE-A family in gastric cancer (GC) specimens and their prognostic and therapeutic significance for GC patients is still unclear.

MATERIALS AND METHODS: Tissue microarray - based immunohistochemistry analysis was used to examine the expression of MAGE-A family members (including MAGE-A1, -A2, -A3, -A4, -A6, -A10, and -A12) in 86 cases of GC specimens, 20 cases of the corresponding adjacent normal gastric specimens, and 9 cases of intraepithelial neoplasia specimens. The association between MAGE-A expression and the clinicopathological parameters as well as the 5-year overall survival of GC patients was analyzed.

RESULTS: 54.7% of GC specimens showed positive MAGE-A expression. In the adjacent normal gastric specimens, MAGE-A was not expressed in the normal surface mucous cells, but expressed in some normal fundic glands. In addition, MAGE-A expression was also detected in intraepithelial neoplasia specimens. In GC specimens, MAGE-A expression was associated with lymph node metastasis, poor differentiation, and high clinical TNM stage. MAGE-A expression was also correlated with the poor 5-year overall survival of GC patients. However, MAGE-A expression is not an independent prognostic factor for GC patients.

CONCLUSIONS: MAGE-A family may be involved in the gastric cancer progression, and their expression could be considered to improve the prognostic evaluation for GC patients.